sample research report on marketing

17+ SAMPLE Market Research Report in PDF | MS Word | Google Docs | Apple Pages

Market research report | ms word | google docs | apple pages, 17+ sample market research report , what is a market research report, benefits of market research report, basic methods of market research, how to create a market research report, what is the format of a report, what exactly is primary research, and how do i begin, what is the difference between primary and secondary data.

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• One-on-one interviews-   These are conducted in high-traffic areas such as shopping malls during in-person surveys. They allow you to hand out product samples, packaging, or advertising to consumers and get rapid feedback. In-person surveys can provide response rates of over 90%, but they are expensive. An in-person survey might cost up to $100 per interview due to the time and work needed.
• Telephone surveys-   This is cheaper than in-person surveys, but they are more costly than surveys sent by mail. However, consumers’ aversion to constant telemarketing and persuading consumers to engage in phone polls has become more challenging. Response rates to telephone surveys are typically in the 50 %to 60 % range.
• Mail surveys-   This is a low-cost technique to reach a large number of people. They’re a lot less expensive than in-person or phone surveys, but they only get 3 to 15% of people to respond. Mail surveys, despite their low return, are still a cost-effective option for small enterprises.

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Table of contents, a comprehensive sample market research report.

• 7 May, 2024

Importance of Market Research

Market research plays a vital role in the success of businesses, providing valuable insights that drive decision-making and strategy. It serves as a foundation for understanding consumer preferences, identifying market trends, and gaining a competitive advantage over other companies in the industry. Let’s explore the specific roles that market research plays in product development and establishing a competitive edge.

Role in Product Development

Market research is a critical component in the research and development phase of introducing new products or services. It helps companies determine the viability and potential success of their offerings by gathering opinions and feedback from consumers. By conducting market research, companies can define their target market, understand consumer needs and preferences, and identify opportunities for innovation.

Market research reports reveal characteristics of ideal customers, buying habits, product value, and top competitors, providing insights into the development of profitable new products or services. This information allows companies to tailor their offerings to meet consumer demands and expectations. By incorporating market research findings into the product development process, businesses can increase the likelihood of creating products that resonate with consumers and achieve market success.

Competitive Advantage

Understanding the market landscape and gaining a competitive edge are crucial for businesses to thrive. Market research helps companies maintain a competitive advantage by providing in-depth knowledge about their target market, customers, and competitors. By analyzing market research reports, businesses can gain insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns.

Market research reports assist in identifying emerging trends, market gaps, and unmet consumer needs. Armed with this information, companies can position their products or services effectively, differentiate themselves from competitors, and develop marketing strategies that resonate with their target audience.

Market research also helps businesses monitor their competitors’ activities, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and identify opportunities for growth. By keeping a pulse on the market and consumer sentiment, companies can adapt their strategies, refine their offerings, and stay ahead of the competition.

By leveraging the insights gained from market research, businesses can make informed decisions, develop tailored products or services, and align their strategies with consumer needs. Market research reports serve as a crucial tool for assimilating information about target markets and prospective customers, enabling businesses to navigate the ever-evolving market landscape successfully.

To get a better understanding of what a market research report looks like, you can refer to an example market research report or explore a market research report template that can guide you in creating your own comprehensive report.

Types of Market Research

When conducting market research, there are two main types to consider: primary research and secondary research. Each type offers unique advantages and insights, allowing businesses to gather valuable information for informed decision-making.

Primary Research

Primary research involves collecting data directly from the source, such as through surveys, interviews, or observations. This type of research is tailored to specific research objectives and provides firsthand information ( Investopedia ).

Primary research methods include:

• Surveys: Conducting surveys allows businesses to gather information from a targeted group of individuals. This can be done through online questionnaires, phone interviews, or in-person interactions.
• Interviews: Interviews involve direct conversations with individuals or groups to gather insights, opinions, and feedback. They can be conducted face-to-face, over the phone, or through video calls.
• Focus Groups: Focus groups bring together a small group of individuals to discuss and provide feedback on a specific product, service, or topic. A skilled moderator guides the discussion to gather valuable insights.
• Observations: Observational research involves observing and documenting consumer behavior in real-time. This can be done through in-person observations or by utilizing technology to track online behavior.

Primary research is more time-consuming and expensive compared to secondary research, but it offers more specific and targeted insights. It allows businesses to gather data that is directly relevant to their research objectives, enabling them to make well-informed decisions.

Secondary Research

On the other hand, secondary research involves using existing data and sources to gather information ( Investopedia ). It includes analyzing data from government reports, industry publications, market studies, and other sources. Secondary research is quicker and less costly compared to primary research, but the data may not be as tailored to the research objectives ( Investopedia ).

Examples of secondary research sources include:

• Government Reports: Government agencies often collect and publish data on various topics that can be relevant to market research. This can include demographic data, economic indicators, and industry-specific reports.
• Industry Publications: Industry-specific magazines, journals, and reports provide valuable insights into market trends, consumer behavior, and competitor analysis.
• Market Studies: Market research firms and organizations conduct studies and publish reports on specific industries, markets, or consumer segments. These reports can provide a wealth of information for businesses.
• Online Databases: Online databases provide access to a wide range of information, including articles, research papers, and statistical data. These sources can be useful for gathering secondary research data.

By utilizing a combination of primary and secondary research methods, businesses can obtain a comprehensive understanding of their target market, consumer preferences, and industry trends. Primary research offers specific insights tailored to the research objectives, while secondary research provides a broader context and existing data to support decision-making.

For a practical example of a market research report, check out our market research report example . Additionally, if you’re looking for a template to help structure your market research report, our market research report template can serve as a useful resource.

Conducting Market Research

When it comes to conducting market research, there are various methods and techniques that can be employed to gather valuable insights. By utilizing these methods, companies can obtain a deeper understanding of their target market, consumer preferences, and industry trends. This section will explore the different methods of research and the benefits and insights they provide.

Methods of Research

Market research can be conducted through a range of methods, each offering its own advantages and limitations. Some common methods include:

Face-to-face interviews: This method involves directly engaging with individuals to gather information. It allows for in-depth discussions and the ability to observe non-verbal cues, providing rich qualitative data.

Focus groups: Focus groups bring together a small group of individuals to discuss specific topics or products. This method encourages group interaction and enables researchers to delve into participants’ opinions and attitudes.

Phone research: Conducting research via phone allows researchers to reach a wider audience. It is a cost-effective method that provides quick insights, but it may have limitations in terms of response rates and the inability to observe non-verbal cues.

Surveys: Surveys are an efficient way to collect data from a large number of participants. They can be conducted online, through email, or even in person, depending on the target audience. Surveys provide quantitative data that can be analyzed statistically.

Online research: With the advent of the internet, online research has become increasingly popular. It allows for quick and cost-effective data collection through various methods such as online surveys, social media listening, and data mining.

By employing a combination of these methods, researchers can gather a comprehensive set of data that caters to both qualitative and quantitative aspects. It is important to choose the most suitable method based on the research objectives, target audience, and available resources.

Benefits and Insights

Market research offers numerous benefits and provides valuable insights for businesses. Some key benefits include:

Understanding consumer preferences: Market research helps companies gain a deep understanding of consumer needs, preferences, and behaviors. This knowledge allows businesses to tailor their products and services to better meet customer expectations and increase customer satisfaction.

Product development: By conducting market research, companies can identify gaps in the market and develop new products or improve existing ones. Research provides insights into what features, functionalities, or improvements customers are looking for in a product or service.

Competitive advantage: Market research enables businesses to stay ahead of the competition by identifying market trends, monitoring competitor strategies, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their competitors. This information helps companies develop effective marketing strategies and differentiate themselves in the market.

Market sizing and forecasting: Through market research, companies can estimate the size of their target market and forecast future demand. This information is crucial for strategic planning, resource allocation, and assessing the potential profitability of a new product or service.

Identifying opportunities and risks: Market research helps businesses identify market opportunities and potential risks. By analyzing market trends, consumer behavior, and industry dynamics, companies can make informed decisions about market entry, expansion, or diversification.

Market research reports play a vital role in consolidating the findings from various research methods and presenting them in a structured format. These reports provide a comprehensive overview of the research conducted, including the purpose, methodology, data analysis, and key insights. By utilizing research data effectively and incorporating the insights gained, businesses can make informed decisions, drive growth, and stay ahead in the competitive marketplace.

For a sample market research report and insights on how to structure your own report, refer to our market research report example and market research report template.

Market Research Reports

Market research reports play a crucial role in providing valuable insights for businesses to make informed decisions. These reports reveal characteristics of ideal customers, buying habits, product value, and top competitors, allowing companies to understand their target markets better and spot business opportunities ( Growfusely ).

Purpose and Contents

The primary purpose of a market research report is to assimilate and present information about target markets and prospective customers. These reports help businesses observe patterns hidden in User Generated Content (UGC) on social media, analyze market trends, and identify competitive edges ( Growfusely ). They serve as a crucial tool for making calculated business decisions and formulating effective marketing strategies.

A comprehensive market research report typically includes the following contents:

Executive Summary : This section provides an overview of the research, highlighting key findings and insights.

Introduction : The introduction sets the stage by explaining the purpose and objectives of the research.

Methodology : This section outlines the research methods employed, including data collection techniques and sample size.

Market Overview : A market overview presents an analysis of the target market, including market size, growth rate, and trends.

Competitive Analysis : This section delves into the competitive landscape, identifying key competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and market share.

Customer Analysis : Customer analysis focuses on understanding the target audience, their preferences, needs, and buying behaviors.

Product Analysis : Product analysis assesses the alignment of existing products or services with consumer needs and identifies opportunities for improvement or innovation.

Findings and Insights : Findings and insights derived from the research are presented in a structured manner, providing actionable recommendations for business strategies.

Utilizing Research Data

The data collected during market research holds immense value for businesses. It is essential to effectively utilize this data to derive meaningful insights and make informed decisions. Data analysis and interpretation have become increasingly important in the digital age due to the exponential growth in available data ( datapine ).

Interpreting market research data involves analyzing complex data sets to identify trends, patterns, and relationships that can inform strategic business decisions. By identifying these insights, companies can tailor their products or services to meet customer needs, identify competitive advantages, and optimize their business strategies.

Data-driven decision-making has proven to be highly beneficial. Companies that implement data-driven processes are, on average, 5% more productive and 6% more profitable ( datapine ). Data interpretation helps in anticipating market trends, understanding customer behavior, and achieving cost efficiency in business operations.

To make the most of research data, businesses should ensure data quality by collecting accurate and reliable information. It is important to use up-to-date data and employ appropriate data collection methods ( Growfusely ). By leveraging the insights gained from market research reports, companies can make well-informed decisions and stay ahead in the competitive landscape.

In conclusion, market research reports serve as invaluable tools for businesses, providing essential information about target markets, customers, and competitors. By utilizing the insights derived from these reports, companies can make data-driven decisions, tailor their products or services, and gain a competitive edge in their industry.

Challenges in Market Research

As valuable as market research is, it comes with its own set of challenges that can impact the accuracy and effectiveness of the insights obtained. Two common challenges faced in market research are data accuracy and adequacy and the need for technology and investments.

Data Accuracy and Adequacy

One of the fundamental challenges in market research is ensuring the accuracy and adequacy of the data collected. Outdated information or a lack of respondents can lead to incomplete or unreliable data, which can significantly impact the decision-making process. Poor data quality can result in misguided strategies and ineffective outcomes.

To address this challenge, market researchers must prioritize data quality and take steps to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data they collect. This can involve implementing automated data quality solutions to identify and rectify inconsistencies or errors in the data. According to a market research report, 31% of respondents identified an automated data quality solution as the most helpful innovation for addressing their business challenges in 2022 ( Qualtrics ).

Additionally, organizations should establish repeatable and robust data gathering and collection processes. This includes using analytics tools effectively, avoiding siloed processes, and fostering collaboration across teams. By having a unified platform and encouraging regular meetings or sessions, businesses can ensure that market research is integrated into the decision-making process and facilitate a culture of data-driven decision-making.

Technology and Investments

Technology plays a crucial role in market research, providing researchers with tools and platforms to collect and analyze data effectively. However, keeping up with the rapidly evolving technological landscape can be a challenge. Market researchers are increasingly investing in specialized market research technology to navigate the post-COVID-19 world. In fact, 67% of respondents reported increasing their investments in market research technology, with 77% considering these technologies critical to their organization’s success ( Qualtrics ).

Investing in technology allows market researchers to leverage automation, streamline processes, and access real-time data. It enables efficient data collection, analysis, and reporting, leading to quicker and more accurate insights. By adopting modern technology platforms, market research agencies and departments can differentiate themselves in a competitive market and deliver high-quality services to their clients.

However, investments in technology should be accompanied by careful financial management. Market research professionals should focus on optimizing costs and increasing efficiency. By automating manual and operational tasks, such as data processing, researchers can allocate more time to higher-value activities like research design and delivering actionable insights. This shift can lead to better financial management and the utilization of modern technology to drive success.

In conclusion, market research faces challenges related to data accuracy and adequacy as well as the need for technology and investments. Overcoming these challenges requires a focus on data quality, leveraging automation and technology, and efficiently managing financial resources. By addressing these challenges head-on, market researchers can enhance the reliability and impact of their research, helping businesses make informed decisions and drive growth.

Data Collection in Market Research

To ensure the accuracy and reliability of market research, data collection plays a crucial role. Collecting high-quality data is essential for obtaining meaningful insights and making informed decisions. In this section, we will explore the importance of data quality and the different types of data collection methods used in market research.

Importance of Data Quality

Data quality is of utmost importance in market research. Dependable data is necessary for statistical analysis and for brands to make well-supported decisions. High-quality data provides a solid foundation for drawing accurate conclusions and shaping effective strategies ( Kadence ).

To ensure data quality, researchers must focus on the following aspects:

Relevance : The collected data should align with the research objectives and address the research questions. Irrelevant data can lead to misleading or inconclusive results.

Accuracy : Data accuracy refers to the correctness and precision of the collected information. It is crucial to minimize errors and biases during data collection to maintain the integrity of the research.

Sufficiency : Sufficient data quantity is essential for generating meaningful insights and drawing reliable conclusions. Insufficient data can limit the depth of analysis and compromise the validity of the research findings.

By prioritizing data quality throughout the research process, marketers can ensure that their decisions are well-informed and supported by robust data.

Types of Data Collection

Market researchers employ various methods to collect data, including both primary and secondary data collection techniques.

Primary Data : Primary data is collected directly for the purpose of the research study at hand. This includes methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and experiments. Primary data collection allows researchers to gather specific and tailored information relevant to their research objectives.

Secondary Data : Secondary data refers to existing data that has been collected and compiled by other researchers or organizations. It includes sources such as government reports, business analyses, polls, surveys, and NGO work. Secondary data collection is cost-effective and time-efficient, providing researchers with a broad range of data to analyze and compare.

Both primary and secondary data collection methods have their own strengths and limitations. Primary data collection enables researchers to gather firsthand information, but it can be time-consuming and expensive. On the other hand, secondary data collection offers a wealth of existing data, but it may not always precisely align with the research objectives.

In addition to these broad categories, data collection methods can be further classified into qualitative and quantitative research:

Qualitative Research : Qualitative research involves collecting non-numerical data, such as interview transcripts, video recordings, and survey responses. Methods like focus groups, interviews, and ethnography allow researchers to gain in-depth insights and understand the underlying motivations and perspectives of individuals or groups.

Quantitative Research : Quantitative research focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis. It involves methods such as closed-ended survey questions, mobile surveys, and Likert scales. Quantitative research enables researchers to make broader generalizations and predictions based on statistical analysis, providing a more comprehensive understanding of larger populations.

By employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, market researchers can gather rich and comprehensive data to support their analysis and decision-making processes.

Data collection is a critical step in the market research process, as it establishes the foundation for meaningful insights and actionable recommendations. By prioritizing data quality and utilizing appropriate data collection methods, marketing and sales teams can gain valuable insights to drive their business strategies forward.

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Blog Marketing 15+ Marketing Report Examples with Templates

15+ Marketing Report Examples with Templates

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Dec 12, 2023

If you’re a modern marketer, you probably live and die by your company’s KPIs, and you can probably talk in detail from memory about your monthly traffic. But communicating that information to others isn’t always so easy, which is why your team needs a stable of marketing report templates.

Learn more about what a marketing report template is, why you need one and why you’re missing the boat if you’re not including engaging visuals in your marketing reports. And when inspiration strikes, use Venngage’s report maker and marketing report templates to create a professional, informative marketing report for your company or agency.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing report, what is the content of a marketing report, marketing report examples for informed decisions, what is the use of a marketing report, how do i write a marketing report, what makes a good marketing report.

A marketing report is a document that analyzes the performance of your marketing strategy or the success of marketing campaigns, and/or makes recommendations regarding potential future campaigns.

A marketing report presents an analysis of all the data gathered from a particular marketing strategy or campaign, measured against a predetermined set of goals and key performance indicators (KPI). From there, you can understand what works and what doesn’t, and learn about ways you can improve future marketing efforts.

It can be a one-pager like this one, which focuses on a company’s website traffic across different devices:

But it can also contain multiple pages, like this marketing report that analyzes the performance of marketing efforts in Q3 as well as next steps for Q4:

As we’ll explore later, there are many types of marketing reports, but most often, these reports include marketing metrics like traffic and engagement rates.

Like many other types of reports companies generate, the content of a marketing report typically extends to facts and data.

In this case, though, the facts and data are most often related to the marketing efforts a company is undertaking. They differ from, say, financial reports, which will typically focus on metrics like sales, expenditures and revenue.

And just as a financial report can be used to gauge the fiscal health of a company, a marketing report can be used to better understand the state of a firm’s marketing efforts and how they’re measured against KPIs, like in the example below:

The most common types of content in a marketing report include:

• Projected outcomes
• Campaign results
• Impressions
• User analysis
• Recommendations

Of course, depending on the type of the report (which we’ll talk about in a second), the content can vary. Here’s an example of a quarterly marketing report that focuses on product sales and strategy:

Marketing reports have a wide range of uses, from keeping tabs on campaigns in nearly real-time to making recommendations about budget and strategy to better understanding users. The best use of a marketing report for your company will depend on what you’re hoping to get out of it.

Here are some good questions to ask before deciding what type of marketing report to use:

• What marketing data do we collect?
• How often do we collect it?
• Who makes our marketing decisions?
• What types of information will inform them best?
• How much time do we have to review reports?

Generally, you can divide marketing reports into two broad types: data-driven and text-driven.

While both types should, of course, have both data and text, the difference is that in data-driven marketing reports, the numbers are the star. Conversely, with text-driven marketing reports, the purpose is analysis or recommendations.

Let’s look a bit closer at the differences:

Data-driven marketing reports

Digital marketing report.

In our internet age, digital marketing accounts for the lion’s share of the average company’s marketing spending. In fact, in 2021, one report found that digital marketing comprised 58 percent of marketing budgets — and it’s expected to grow by another 15 percent in 2022.

This template, based on our analysis of Hubspot data , is an excellent entry point for how your company can better visualize all types of information for your digital marketing report.

We partnered with HubSpot to create this report, containing up-to-date data on marketing trends and insights you all need to know for 2022. Want to see the full report? Download it for free here .

Social media marketing report

For most companies, social media is one of their most important ways to reach consumers. Social media reports can cover broad areas or specific campaign results — or they can do both.

This social media marketing report presents the performance of three different social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) for a marketing campaign called “Make Someone Smile”:

If you want some more inspiration, here’s another social media report template for the same campaign. This particular one focuses on the planning phase of the campaign, as it talks about the objectives, the target audience, as well as the actual strategy:

You can certainly use both templates to plan and report on the performance of your social media marketing campaigns!

Monthly marketing report

Marketing isn’t a one-time, set-it-and-forget-it prospect, so having several templates on hand that can help your company track metrics in close to real-time is important.

Consider using a monthly marketing report template like this one, which is ideal for companies that need to get better insight into their user base.

Email marketing report

Email continues to be a critical channel for marketers, and email marketing reports are a necessity for modern teams. Given the plethora of metrics related to email marketing , it’s even more important for these types of marketing reports to be straightforward and simple to understand. Lots of email marketing tools like  HubSpot  or Mailchimp will come with built in marketing reports included in their platform.

Weekly marketing report

While this template was created for a sales team, it’s perfectly applicable on the marketing side of operations as well. Using this type of template for your marketing team is an excellent way to make sure your colleagues (and executives) take note of important metrics as they occur.

SEO marketing report

Search engine optimization is one of the services most commonly offered by marketing agencies, teams and departments, so being able to chart things like organic traffic and engagement with charts like those in this report is crucial.

Did you know we did a survey about the role of visuals in content marketing? Check out the results of the survey here.

Marketing KPIs report

As they say in sports, stats don’t lie, and marketing teams often live and die by KPIs. Use a template like this to visualize how your campaigns are going on various channels and how well you are engaging with users.

Marketing statistics

In addition to keeping tabs on how successful your company is in marketing itself on a weekly or monthly basis, the concept of marketing itself can be the subject of a marketing report, such as in this example, which shares a series of marketing statistics.

Text-driven marketing reports

Marketing research report.

When your marketing report doesn’t need to focus on rapidly changing metrics, consider a template like this one that will allow you to dig into the WHY of your numbers, telling data-driven stories that can help your company’s decision-makers chart the best course for the company.

Learn more about using data to tell a story about your brand .

Marketing analytics report

Marketing analytics reports can be in-depth, as the previous example, or they can be short and sweet, sharing a few key metrics but focusing largely on taking the reader through the information with well-placed analysis.

Marketing strategies report

Whether you’re a consultant or an internal worker, marketing strategies reports can help you explain why you think a certain strategy or tactic is best. Use this template to sell your services or sell your higher-ups on a bigger budget or emergence into a new channel.

Marketing agency report

Marketing agency reports can also help your company establish its thought leadership in your space. Take a page from this template and forecast trends in your field or make a policy recommendation by creating a whitepaper.

Team marketing report

Use this project status template as a team marketing report to keep your department on track. Particularly if your marketing team is remote, ensuring everyone is working toward the same goal on the correct pace is critical. If you’re launching a new campaign, a template like this can help everyone visualize what’s to come.

Some marketing reports will be almost entirely data, meaning you won’t have to write much at all. Others can be very heavy on text, including analysis and recommendations.

A good rule of thumb, though, even if your marketing report does rely heavily on data is to make sure that each chart or table is clearly explained with a small header, usually above the chart. Here’s an example of how that looks:

Depending on its purpose, you could also provide more analysis or key takeaways within the body of your marketing report:

The easiest way would be to choose the type of marketing reports you want to create, pick a template of that type and edit using the existing content! If you want to make your marketing report reflect your brand, you can add your brand colors and logos using Autobrand:

And apply all branding elements to the report using My Brand Kit :

Regardless of whether it’s data-driven or text-driven, a good marketing report should tell you something you didn’t already know. In the context of a company or marketing team, that means providing insight about your marketing campaigns.

For example, if you’re creating a marketing report for your colleagues, they may already know that a certain social media channel is your most successful, so simply reporting those numbers may not do much good. A truly useful marketing report will help them make mental connections. That could mean showing that the previously mentioned channel has had a certain number of weeks of growth or decline, or some other useful insight.

Wisely using visuals can help in this effort. That’s because the human brain processes things like charts and graphs more quickly and more effectively than text.

This marketing report about user demographics, for example, can give readers information in the blink of an eye that they would need to read paragraphs of content to understand.

And even if they understood it intellectually, visualizing data can make information more memorable, and in the context of a fast-paced marketing department, making information sticky is critical. Related: 20 Professional Report Cover Page Examples & Templates [100% Customizable]

In summary: Marketing reports can tell you where your company sits in the minds of consumers — and where you need to go.

There’s no shortage of marketing data generated by the average company over the course of a day. In fact, in the time it’s taken you to read this post, your KPIs have probably changed a little bit. Harness the power of data visualization and analysis to enable better decision-making in your company.

You can easily create a marketing report using Venngage’s easy-to-edit templates . It’s free to get started.

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Charts that Speak: Market Research Report Examples Explored

A Market Research Report Example serves as a pivotal tool for businesses aiming to understand market dynamics and make informed decisions.

A fast-growing fashion retailer, XYZ Inc., desires to enter the US market. They are curious whether the US market will accept their product line. They opt to compile a market research report to find out.

They use surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other data sources to compile the report’s qualitative and quantitative data. The report is then analyzed to get an understanding of the US market.

XYZ Inc. determines after evaluating the data that the US market is ready for its product line. This information enables them to join the US market successfully.

A market research report is a crucial resource for your business. You can tweak your strategies for greater success from the insights it offers.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what a market research report is and why it’s important. We will also use a market research report example to learn how to present it.

Table of Contents:

What is a market research report, how to collect market research data, types of market research reports with examples, top 3 market research report examples.

• Presenting Market Research Results
• Importance of Marketing Research Report

A market research report documents the results of a market research project. It contains useful data, analysis, and data reporting examples about a given market. You can use it to guide strategic marketing and new product development.

You can also use market research reports for a variety of purposes, such as determining needs and preferences, as well as spotting market opportunities, often illustrated through data reporting examples that highlight key findings.

Typically, Market Research Report Examples encompass details such as:

• Target audience characteristics.
• Market size.
• Market potential.
• Competition analysis.

A crucial step in creating a market research report is data collection. Surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observational studies are some of the methods you can use.

When collecting market research information, it is advisable to utilize data from a representative sample of the target market. The accuracy of insights into the market is greatly enhanced through the use of this representative sampling, making Market Research Report Examples more valuable.

Here are some common types of market research reports:

1. Topline Market Research Report

Market Research Report Examples streamline the processes of data analysis and research interpretation, providing businesses with a simplified understanding. Topline market research reports provide a comprehensive summary of the research findings. They present the crucial insights and data points from the study.

This report contains market size, demographic details, consumer habits, and competitor analysis.

It simplifies the data analysis and research interpretation processes for businesses.

Business decisions, such as product development and marketing strategy, rely on the insights provided by these reports.

In addition, they help with communication with investors and other stakeholders.

2. Full Market Research Report

A full market research report investigates the current market landscape, trends, and opportunities. Furthermore, it highlights promising future developments and key growth areas.

It also offers information on major participants in the sector.

The report might also include information about government regulations and distribution methods.

Ultimately, a full market research report provides a thorough market analysis, including a competitive analysis example . Therefore, it is a valuable resource for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge.

3. Product Detail Market Research Report

This is an exhaustive analysis of a product or service’s potential in the market. Features, benefits, target audience, competitors, and pricing are all spelled out here.

This report helps with understanding the market’s state and the possibilities for expansion. In addition, it shows how your business can differentiate itself from rivals.

You can also use it to measure the success of a product and adjust where necessary.

Presenting marketing research data can be a daunting task. Luckily, ChartExpo exists to aid in the creation of appealing and understandable data visualizations.

You can communicate marketing research findings effectively with charts and graphs. They simplify the presentation of complex data.

Here are a few examples of Market Research reports you can use to present your marketing results.

Market Research Report Example # 1: Customer Feedback Report

Customer Feedback Report is one of the best examples of Market Research Report. You can easily create this report using a CSAT Score Bar Chart.

A CSAT Score Bar Chart is a special graph plotting the CSAT scores against the number of records. It works well for presenting market research data. Viewers can digest crucial information like customer satisfaction rates in a snap.

The chart has two axes, one displaying the CSAT score for each metric. The other axis shows the corresponding number of customers or respondents.

CSAT Score Bar Chart enables you to compare customer feedback on various metrics. For instance, you can compare feedback on delivery and feedback on customer service. Finding out where you’re succeeding and where you’re falling short of customers’ expectations is a huge benefit.

Here is a marketing research example visualized in a CSAT Score Bar Chart.

Market Research Report Example # 2: Customer Satisfaction Report

Customer Satisfaction Report is one of the best examples of Market Research Report. You can easily create this report using a Customer Satisfaction Chart.

The Customer Satisfaction Chart is one of the most valuable marketing tools. It presents market research data in an understandable format. Therefore, it is helpful when developing an effective marketing strategy.

The Customer Satisfaction Chart is a versatile tool for presenting market research data. For instance, a Box And Whisker report can visually display how various products or services compare in client satisfaction. This allows you to identify trends and find the most sought-after products or services by consumers.

You can also use it to monitor satisfaction levels over time. This can reveal any shifts in how satisfied customers are with your business.

The graphic also allows you to assess how satisfied certain groups of customers are. As a result, it helps identify the most important subsets of customers to focus on in your marketing.

Below is a market research report example presented in a Customer Satisfaction Chart.

Market Research Report Example # 3: Product Analysis Report

Product Analysis Report is one of the best examples of Market Research Report. You can easily create this report using a Likert Scale Chart.

The Likert Scale Chart is an effective tool for presenting market research data. Researchers use it to study how people think and act. It displays how strongly respondents agree or disagree with a statement or question.

Options lie on a scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” The scale aids in eliminating ambiguity in the responses and easing interpretation.

In addition to its simplicity, the Likert Scale Chart is also easy to read. Furthermore, you can alter it to meet the specific requirements of the study. For instance, you can alter the number of points to allow for more nuanced responses. Or else you can change the labels to match the survey’s language.

Enjoy the visualization below of a marketing research report example in a Likert Scale Chart.

Presenting Market Research Report with Example

Using ChartExpo, you can effectively display your marketing research data. You can quickly create stunning charts and graphs. Therefore, you can communicate your data with ease to your audience.

It has a variety of visualizations you can create to make your data outstanding and interesting.

You can modify the charts in ChartExpo to meet your specific needs in several ways. With its intuitive design controls, you can customize your data presentation to convey the right message.

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

• Open your Excel application.
• Open the worksheet and click on the “ Insert ” menu.
• You’ll see the “ My Apps ”.
• In office Add-ins window, click on “ Store ” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
• Click on “ Add ” button to install ChartExpo in your Excel.

ChartExpo charts and graphs are available both in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Please use the following CTA’s to install the tool of your choice and create beautiful visualizations in a few clicks in your favorite tool.

Market Research Report Example with Data:

Let’s use the marketing report example below to learn how to create one in Excel.

Suppose you need feedback from your customers to improve your products. You create a questionnaire with a scale of 1 to 5 and conduct a survey.

• 1 = Strongly Disagree
• 2 = Disagree
• 3 = Neutral
• 5 = Strongly Agree

Let’s say you get the data tabulated below.

• To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel .
• Now Click on My Apps from the INSERT menu.

• Choose ChartExpo from My Apps , then click Insert.

• Once ChartExpo is loaded. Click on “ Likert Scale Chart ” from the list of charts.

• Click “ Create Chart From Selection ” button after selecting the data from the sheet, as shown.

• The Likert Scale Chart will look like as follows.

• If you want to have the title of chart, click on Edit Chart , as shown in the above image.
• To change the title of the chart, click on the pencil icon that is available very next to Chart Header .
• It will open the properties dialog. Under the Text section, you can add a heading in Line 1 and enable the Show Give the appropriate title of your chart and click on Apply button.
• For saving changes click on Save Changes . This will persist the changes.

• The final chart will look as follows.

• 71% of respondents were content with the product’s reliability, while 13% expressed dissatisfaction.
• 59% said they found the product easy to use, and 22% had difficulty.
• 66% were satisfied with the speed of delivery, while 16% disagreed.
• Altogether, 65% of respondents said they were pleased with the product.

Why Do You Need Market Research Reports?

Market Research Reports play a crucial role in strategic decision-making and business planning. Here are various reasons that underscore their importance:

Gain Insights into the Industry

You can get comprehensive insights into the market, including its trends and challenges. This is essential for a business that wants to maximize its potential. You can use this data to study your rivals’ strategies and find market gaps. Consequently, you learn how your goods and services might better serve your clients’ demands.

A Holistic View of the Market

A marketing research report will give you a comprehensive understanding of the market. This covers its present situation, difficulties, and opportunities.

Understanding your current and potential customers’ motives, actions, and preferences will help you improve your services.

Decision-Making

Marketing research reports inform wise and data-driven marketing decisions. This boosts your chances of succeeding. You can also use it to determine the best marketing strategies to use.

Enhancing Credibility and Reputation

This report will give you the information you need to build a credible brand image. It will allow you to highlight your strengths, distinctive selling propositions, and appealing qualities.

Consequently, you can develop a brand identity that resonates with your target market.

Strategic Planning

You can gain knowledge about the future of your sector via a marketing research report, including insights into market segmentation . You can use this information to inform your judgments and stay abreast of the times. It can also aid in your preparation for potential challenges and developments in the market.

What is a market research report?

A market research report presents an in-depth examination of a selected market. It highlights the state of the market, opportunities, trends, or challenges currently available. It also sheds light on customers’ likes and dislikes and how they might change.

What’s included in a market research report?

Typically, it has an in-depth analysis of the target market. It dissects market segmentation, price strategy, and promotional approaches. Also, it includes elements that help you make informed decisions on your offerings and promotional strategies.

How can I use market research reports in decision-making?

It contains detailed assessments of the state of the market and its prospects. Market research reports are a valuable resource due to their wealth of information. You can identify opportunities and make better strategy and management decisions from their insights.

How can Excel help in the analysis of market research data?

Excel is capable of quickly analyzing massive volumes of data. This enables for in-depth analysis of trends and patterns. It offers a variety of functions and visual representations for examining this data.

Can you provide a sample Market Research Report example for a specific industry?

This question seeks to obtain a practical illustration, allowing users to understand how a market research report is structured and presented in a real-world context.

How can a Market Research Report example benefit my business decision-making process?

This question delves into the practical advantages of utilizing market research report examples, emphasizing the impact on informed decision-making and strategic planning within a business context.

Market Research Report Examples offer a comprehensive overview of the entire industry, enabling businesses to make well-informed marketing and strategic decisions. Conducting market research is an essential part of any business. It helps cultivate a stronger reputation and boosts brand loyalty among its customers.

You can get a bird’s-eye view of the entire industry with a market research report. You can use this information to make informed marketing and business choices. As a result, it aids in enhancing credibility.

You can get the advantage you need over the competition with the help of market research reports. You can use the data to fine-tune your campaigns and zero in on expansion opportunities.

But how do you create a marketing research report?

You use Excel and ChartExpo to create appealing visualizations for your market research data. As we have shown with the marketing report example above.

You can create an insightful report and present it to your stakeholders in a few clicks

How much did you enjoy this article?

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Management Notice

Report generator.

Many corporations use market research to see if their products and services are relevant and interesting to the masses. This helps them figure out the changes in market trends, consumer likes and dislikes, and other various aspects. The results of marketing research are needed for a business owner to decide what the next product marketing plan is. If you want to study the outcome of conducted marketing research, you need a marketing research report. This displays the methods used, the subjects of the research, and the final output. Here are 10+ marketing research reports templates you can use for your research.

10+ Marketing Research Report Templates

Marketing research is a method used to gather information about the market, your product, and how they would affect each other. To help you with this research, here are sample marketing research templates you can use.

1. Sample Marketing Report

• Google Docs

Size: A4 & US Letter Sizes

If you are planning on building a startup, you have to be sure that your proposed products and services are favorable to your target market. In business, you can’t just produce something without seeing if it would sell. You need to study how well it would hit the market and who your prospective clients would be. You need to conduct marketing research, study the results, then start your business strategic plan . To help you with this process, here is a  Sample Marketing Report Template  you can use. You can report your research results in a hassle-free way using this editable template.

2. Market Research Report

Before you can launch a service or product, you need to analyze its favorability. That’s why you conduct marketing research. You need to make sure that the results of your research are understandable and organized. How can you make the right business proposals if you can’t make sense of the data presented? That is why you need this Market Research Report Template . It has premade content so you can be sure that arrange the data perfectly. From the process to results, you can place all the details in this customizable template.

3. Market Analysis Report

If you are a market analyst, don’t you want the end product of your surveys and observations to look neat and presentable? You want a document you can confidently show your bosses. If you want to make sure your research business report is well-made, you should give this market analysis report template a try. This template is easy to use and easy to edit so you can fit your specifications with its quality content. You can even edit in graphics and charts of your results in this template. Our skilled team makes it so you can be sure it’s high-quality. Download this template now! 

4. Operative Report Template

Your prospect market is like a sick patient; you need to understand its conditions before you can start operation. Before you can offer your products and services, you need to figure out what the market needs. After the whole data gathering process is done and dealt with, the next step is to document your variables, methods, and results for further analysis. To help you put everything together, you can use this operative report template. You can use this for your qualitative research; just edit the given labels and add in the data, and you have your technical report !

5. Marketing Research Summary Report Template

After your marketing research, the next task is to summarize everything. You need to have your process, results, and other key elements reported in one document. This helps analysts and business owners come up with a decision for the company. Maybe your results can lead to new market strategy business plans and other corporate choices.  To keep things together, you can use this Marketing Research Summary Report Template . This customizable template can fit any of your quantitative summaries. It just needs a little editing, and you have what you need. Download this high-quality template now!

6. Research Report Cover Page Template

Size: A4 & US Sizes

When submitting your reports, you need to make sure that it gets your reviewers’ attention. You need to wow them from the very start. Before they read your introduction, they should take some time to look at your cover page. It may not seem like such an important part of the document, but it promises your reviewers that you are about to give them quality content. For your research cover page, you can use IResearch Report Cover Page Template. You can personalize this report template to fit your research. And the best thing? Thi template is free to download! 

7. Market Research Project Report Template

• Illustrator
• Editable PDF

Projects and researches need a lot of time and effort. They have to be properly conducted to make sure you get usable results. That is why the way the results are displayed is also important. The many hours you spent conducting your marketing research would be put to waste if the presented results are unclear. To make sure that the final output of your research is understandable, you can use this Market Research Project Report Template . You can customize this template so that it fits your research project proposal and report perfectly. It’s easy to use, ready to print, and free to download.

8. Marketing Research Daily Work Report Template

When conducting research, you need to make sure you are constantly gathering data. You have to make sure that there is progress in your research every single day. Stagnant research won’t get you anywhere. You need a research progress chart to record, study, and analyze your data daily to come up with valid results. To help you gather data for your research, you can use the Marketing Research Daily Work Report Template shown above.  This template is 100% customizable, so you can make sure it fits your needs. Ready to print in commercial and personal printers. Try it out now!

9. Marketing Research Project Weekly Status Report Template

If your research does not need to be checked on daily, you still need to make sure that it gets constant follow up. Checking the status of your research keeps you updated if some other variables, like business trends and competition, come into play. If you plan to survey the weekly status of your research, you should have a standardized progress report for checking your project. What you need is the  Marketing Research Project Weekly Status Report Template  embedded above. You don’t have to worry about the contents of this template, you have to edit in the necessary details, and it’s ready for use.

10. Marketing Research Scope of Work Report Template

For any project, the task and obligations have to be designated. Assigning who does what is part of any organizational flow . Work goals also have to be set so that the desired results can be achieved. In research, there also has to be task designations. No one can do the whole research on their own in a given timeframe. What you need is the Marketing Research Scope of Work Report Template . This template organizes the task assignment in a research team and allows you to sets goals for the whole team. It’s easy to edit and free to download!

11. Market Research Summary Report

Size: 1.3 MB

Are you unsure what market research is ? Do you need a guide to help you format your work? Your market research report has to be complete. Any missing part can render your results false and invalid. You need to make sure that you place key elements of your research concisely. From the cover to the conclusion, your final report has to be well-made and well-thought-of. If you need a sample for your report, the  Market Research Summary Report  (shown above) might be what you need. Pattern your research report using this as your guide.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Generate a report on the impact of technology in the classroom on student learning outcomes

Prepare a report analyzing the trends in student participation in sports and arts programs over the last five years at your school.

Learn How to Write a Market Research Report: 10 Steps to Follow for Success

Dec, 2023 - by CMI

A market research report is an integral part of the coursework for many business programs. It explores the understanding of subjective views of customers towards a product or service. Still, many students struggle to create market reports that effectively address the business question. So, how do you avoid the deer-in-the-headlights reaction when presenting a market research report?  

In most cases, marketers fail to create impactful research reports because they don’t know the actionable steps to follow. 10 main steps occur in a typical market research study and reporting process, from problem identification to acting on the result. Read on to get all the information you need to write a top-notch market research report.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a document prepared to evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service to potential customers. Companies do market research reports to paint a picture of what products, services, or actions may be the most profitable to pursue. Actionable information is obtained through market research prepared in a formal report that reveals the characteristics of customers, the value of a product or service, buying habits, and a list of top competitors.

Writing a market research report helps businesses make calculated decisions about what ideas to pursue or not. It focuses on studying consumer behavior that influences spending decisions, including cultural, economic, societal, and personal factors. As a result, businesses can assimilate critical information and tips about prospective customers and target markets.

10 Steps to Write a Market Research Report That Accurately Highlights Market Opportunities

Identify the problem and objectives.

In market research, there’s a famous saying that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. So defining the potential problem, causes, or opportunities in the market is a great place to start your marketing research papers. The information will help you narrow down the parameters of the study, such as the business objective and research objectives. Whether you want to test a hypothesis about consumer opinion or how consumers will react to a new pricing model, they all require identifying a solid objective.  

Develop your research strategy

This is a crucial step in preparing a market research report because it will define the quality of data collection and the reliability of results. Choose between primary research or secondary research methods. Also, you will need to decide whether you will utilize quantitative or qualitative research methods. The most effective research strategy depends on your sample size and profile as well as the desired outcomes based on the objectives.

Use the help of writing services

In case you feel inefficient in handling crucial market research writing steps, such as defining the problem, identifying research objectives, or developing a research strategy, get the help you need from a professional. Reputable academic paper writing services, such as CustomWritings, have plenty of certified academic writers with extensive knowledge and experience in custom research paper writing of any complexity. You can get one written from scratch by an expert in a stipulated time to make your work easier.

Prepare an outline and set a deadline

If you can write a market research report yourself, develop an outline with sections and subsections you will cover in your paper. A typical market research report includes the following sections:

• Introduction
• Methodology

Market research reports also come with a fixed due date. So, allocate time for completing each section to ensure you finish the task before the deadline.

Specify the sample

Before you can start collecting data, you need to specify who will participate in the study. Start by defining your population correctly and defining a sampling frame from which you will draw the sample. For example, you can use a customer list, directory, or membership roster to get a good sample. Large samples produce more reliable results, but the more data you have, the costlier and more time-consuming your research will be. Use statistics to define an optimal sample size.

Gather data and information

Next, conduct fieldwork to collect relevant data. If you’re conducting quantitative research, use text, emails, websites, and social media to reach respondents. For qualitative research, primary data collection typically involves interviews or ethnographic research through video surveys. Find ways to record and organize responses from each source. You can complement each type of research with secondary data that relates to your topic.

Technology has made data analysis a breeze for researchers. Students can use programs such as Excel, STATA, and SPSS to organize, clean, analyze, and interpret basic results of their market research. The type of analysis you’ll adopt will depend on your hypothesis. Some good marketing analyses that you can conduct include:

• Market segmentation analysis
• Conjoint analysis
• Price sensitivity analysis
• TURF analysis

Present findings in a written report

It’s time to put your study together in a well-written market research analysis report that you will present to an audience of decision-makers. The goal is to make your findings come alive so that the audience understands your objectives and insights uncovered in the research. While data analysis could be complex, the final report should only point to the concrete actions and results. Ensure your college research report includes a title page, table of contents, executive summary, methodology, findings, and recommendations. In some cases, you can accompany your report with a slide presentation, charts, case summaries, and graphs.  

Cross-check

When you’re done with your market research report, take time to read through all the details to see if you’ve missed anything, have made mistakes, or if it has a good flow. Your first draft is never your final product. University students can get editing help from professional editing services, or online editing tools, or just ask a friend to double-check the report. Edit the report as many times as you want to make it clear and concise.

Act on your findings

Local and international businesses prepare market research reports for many reasons. Maybe they want to enter a new market or launch a new product. With a research report in hand, it’s time to act on the findings and the recommendations. This could involve commissioning the production of a product, setting up a social media framework, or taking actions to monitor customer loyalty. Still, stay alert to changes in trends that might require new research to be launched in the future.

Wrapping Up

When a busy business executive or professor grabs your market research report, they want to see something that will give them an idea of the research design, the results, and the big picture that addresses company goals. Follow the guide provided in this article to prepare a clear and actionable market research report.

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The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates]

A comprehensive guide on Market Research with tools, examples of brands winning with research, and templates for surveys, focus groups + presentation template.

Rakefet is the CMO at Mayple. She manages all things marketing and leads our community of experts through live events, workshops, and expert interviews. MBA, 1 dog + 2 cats, and has an extensive collection of Chinese teas.

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Natalie is a content writer and manager who is passionate about using her craft to empower others. She thrives on team dynamic, great coffee, and excellent content. One of these days, she might even get to her own content ideas.

Updated February 26, 2024.

Before you do anything in business you have to have a good grasp of the market. What’s the market like? Who are your competitors? And what are the pain points and challenges of your ideal customer? And how can you solve them? Once you have the answers to those questions then you are ready to move forward with a marketing plan and/or hire a digital marketing agency to execute it.

In this guide we break down what market research is, the different types of market research, and provide you with some of the best templates, tools, and examples, to help you execute it on your own.

Excited to learn?

Let’s dive in.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to determine the success of your product or service, make changes to your existing product, or understand the perception of your brand in the market.

“Research is formalized curiosity, it is poking and prying with a purpose.” - Zora Neale Hurston

We hear the phrase "product-market fit" all the time and that just means that a product solves a customer's need in the market. And it's very hard to get there without proper market research. Now, I know what you're going to say. Why not get actionable insights from your existing customers? Why not do some customer research?

The problem with customer research is two-fold:

• You have a very limited amount of data as your current customers don't represent the entire market.
• Customer research can introduce a lot of bias into the process.

So the real way to solve these issues is by going broader and conducting some market research.

Why do market research?

There are many benefits of doing market research for your company. Here are a few of them:

• Understand how much demand exists in the market, the market size
• Discover who your competitors are and where they are falling short.
• Better understand the needs of your target customers and the problems and pain points your product solves.
• Learn what your potential customers feel about your brand.
• Identify potential partners and new markets and opportunities.
• Determine which product features you should develop next.
• Find out what your ideal customer is thinking and feeling.
• Use these findings to improve your brand strategy and marketing campaigns.

“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight.” - Carly Fiorina

Market research allows you to make better business decisions at every stage of your business and helps you launch better products and services for your customers.

Primary vs secondary research

There are two main types of market research - primary and secondary research.

Primary research

Primary market research is when researchers collect information directly, instead of relying on outside sources of information. It could be done through interviews, online surveys, or focus groups and the advantage here is that the company owns that information. The disadvantage of using primary sources of information is that it's usually more expensive and time-consuming than secondary market research.

Secondary research

Secondary market research involves using existing data that is summarized and collected by third parties. Secondary sources could be commercial sources or public sources like libraries, other websites, blogs , government agencies, and existing surveys. It's data that's more readily available and it's usually much cheaper than conducting primary research.

Qualitative vs quantitative research

Qualitative research is about gathering qualitative data like the market sentiment about the products currently available on the market (read: words and meanings). Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics. It's data that is numbers-based, countable, and measurable.

Types of market research

1. competitive analysis.

Every business needs to know its own strengths and weaknesses and how they compare with its largest competitors in the market. It helps brands identify gaps in the market, develop new products and services, uncover market trends, improve brand positioning , and increase their market share. A SWOT analysis is a good framework to use for this type of research.

2. Consumer insights

It's also equally important to know what consumers are thinking, what the most common problems are and what products they are purchasing. Consumer research can be done through social listening which involves tracking consumer conversations on social media. It could also include analyzing audiences of brands , online communities, and influencers, and analyzing trends in the market.

3. Brand awareness research

Brand awareness is a super important metric for understanding how well your target audience knows your brand. It's used to assess brand performance and the marketing effectiveness of a brand. It tells you about the associations consumers make when they think of your brand and what they believe you're all about.

4. Customer satisfaction research

 Customer satisfaction and loyalty are two really important levers for any business and you don't have to conduct in-depth interviews to get that information. There is a wide range of automated methods to get that kind of data including customer surveys such as NPS surveys, customer effort score (CES) surveys, and regularly asking your customers about their experience with your brand.

5. Customer segmentation research

 Customer segmentation research involves figuring out what buckets consumers fall into based on common characteristics such as - demographics, interests, purchasing behavior, and more. Market segmentation is super helpful for advertising campaigns, product launches, and customer journey mapping.

6. Interviews

Customer interviews are one of the most effective market research methods out there. It's a great way for business owners to get first-party data from their customers and get insights into how they are doing in real time.

7. Focus groups

Focus groups are a great way to get data on a specific demographic. It's one of the most well-known data collection methods and it involves taking a sample size of people and asking them some open-ended questions. It's a great way to get actionable insights from your target market.

8. Pricing research

 Pricing strategy has a huge influence on business growth and it's critical for any business to know how they compare with the leading brands in their niche. It can help you understand what your target customer is willing to pay for your product and at what price you should be selling it.

To start, get automated software to track your competitors' pricing . Then, summarize your research into a report and group the results based on product attributes and other factors. You can use quadrants to make it easier to read visually.

9. Campaign research

It's also important for a brand to research its past marketing campaigns to determine the results and analyze their success. It takes a lot of experimentation to nail the various aspects of a campaign and it's crucial for business leaders to continuously analyze and iterate.

10. Product/service use research

Product or user research gives you an idea of why and how an audience uses a product and gives you data about specific features. Studies show that usability testing is ranked among the most useful ways to discover user insights (8.7 out of 10), above digital analytics and user surveys. So it's a very effective way to measure the usability of a product.

Now that you know the different types of market research let's go through a step-by-step process of setting up your study.

How to conduct a market research study

Looking for your next business idea? Want to check which niche markets are going to be best for it? if it's going to Here's a pretty simple process for conducting

1. Define your buyer persona

The first step in market research is to understand who your buyers are. For that, you need a buyer persona (sometimes called a marketing persona) which is a fictional generalized description of your target customer. You could (and should) have several buyer personas to work with.

Key characteristics to include in your buyer personas are:

• Job title(s)
• Family size
• Major challenges

Now that you've got your customer personas it's time to decide who to work with for your research.

2. Identify the right people to engage with

It's critical that you pick the right group of people to research. This could make or break your market research study. It's important to pick a representative sample that most closely resembles your target customer. That way you'll be able to identify their actual characteristics, challenges, pain points, and buying behavior.

Here are a few strategies that will help you pick the right people:

• Select people who have recently interacted with you
• Pull a list of participants who made a recent purchase
• Call for participants on social media
• Leverage your own network
• Gather a mix of participants
• Offer an incentive (gift card, product access, content upgrades)

3. Pick your data collection method(s)

Here's a quick breakdown of all the different ways you could collect data for your market research study.

Surveys are by far the fastest method of gathering data. You could launch them on your site or send them in an email and automate the whole process. Regular surveys can also help brands improve their customer service so they help kill two birds with one stone.

Interviews take a little longer and require a detailed set of interview questions. Never go into an interview without a clear idea of what you're going to be asking. It's also a little more difficult to schedule time and to get your potential or current customers on the phone or on Zoom.

Focus group

Focus groups are controlled interviews with groups of people led by facilitators. Participants in focus groups are selected based on a set of predetermined criteria such as location, age, social status, income, and more.

Online tracking

Online tracking is done through digital analytics tools like HotJar or Google Analytics. Tracking user behavior on your site gets you an accurate analysis of who your demographic is and what are the types of products or content that they engage with.

The problem here is that you never get to find out the 'why' - the reason behind their behavior - and that's why you need to combine digital analytics with other data collection methods like surveys and usability/product testing.

Marketing analysis

Another great way to collect data is to analyze your marketing campaigns which gives you a great idea of who clicked on your ads, how often, and which device they used. It's a more focused way of using tracking to zero in on a specific marketing campaign.

Social media monitoring

We've talked about this one before. Social monitoring or listening is when you track online conversations on social media platforms. You can use a simple social listening tool to get all the data you need by searching for specific keywords, hashtags, or topics.

Subscription and registration data

Another great way to collect data is to look at your existing audience. That might include your email list, rewards program, or existing customers. Depending on the size of your list, it could give you some broad insights into the type of customers/users you have and what they are most interested in.

Monitoring in-store traffic

Conduct a customer observation session to monitor your actual customers and how they behave in your store (physically or online). Observation is a market research technique where highly-trained market researchers observe how people or consumers interact with products/services in a natural setting.

4. Prepare your research questions

Write down your research questions before you conduct the research. Make sure you cover all the topics that you are trying to gain clarity on and include open-ended questions. The type of questions you use will vary depending on your data collection approach from the last step.

If you're doing a survey or an in-person interview then here are some of the best questions to ask.

The awareness stage

• How did you know that something in this product category could help you?
• Think back to the time you first realized you needed [product category]. What was your challenge?
• How familiar were you with different options on the market?

The consideration stage

• Where did you go to find out the information?
• What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions?
• Did you search on Google? What specifically did you search for? Which keywords did you use?
• Which vendor sites did you visit?
• What did you find helpful? What turned you off?

The decision stage

• Which criteria did you use to compare different vendors?
• What vendors made it to the shortlist and what were the pros/cons of each?
• Who else was involved in the final decision?
• Allow time for further questions on their end.
• Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their email/address to receive the incentive you offered

If you noticed, the progression of these questions follows the stages of the buyer's journey which helps you to gain actionable insights into the entire customer experience.

5. List your primary competitors

There are two kinds of competitors - industry competitors and content competitors. Industry competitors compete with you on the actual product or service they sell. Content competitors compete with you in terms of the content they publish - whether that's on specific keywords or they rank higher on topics that you want to be ranked for.

It's important to write a list of all of your competitors and compare their strengths, weaknesses, competitive advantages, and the type of content they publish.

There are different ways to find your competitors. You can look on sites like G2 Crowd and check their industry quadrants.

You could also download a market report from Forrester or Gartner . And you could also search on social media or market research tools like SimilarWeb .

6. Summarize your findings

Now that you've done your research it's time to summarize your findings. Look for common themes in your research and try to present them in the simplest way possible. Use your favorite presentation software to document it and add it to your company database.

Here's a quick research outline you could use:

Background - your goals and why you conducted this study

Participants - who you've talked to. Break down the type of personas and/or customers you've spoken with.

Executive summary - what was the most interesting stuff you've learned? What do you plan to do about it?

Customer journey map - map out the specific motivations and behavioral insights you've gained from each stage of the customer journey (awareness, consideration, and decision).

Action plan - describe what action steps you're going to take to address the issues you've uncovered in your research and how you are going to promote your product/service to your target audience more effectively.

Market research template

Not sure where to begin? Need some templates to help you get started? We got them for you.

1. Market survey template

First and foremost, you need a template to run your market survey. In this template, you will find all the types of questions you should be asking - demographic, product, pricing, and brand questions. They can be used for market surveys, individual interviews, and focus groups.

We also present a variety of question formats for you to use:

• true/false questions
• multiple choice questions
• open response questions

2. SWOT analysis template

A strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is one of the best ways to do competitor research. It's a really simple analysis. There are four squares and you write down all four of these attributes for each of your competitors.

3. Focus group template

Not sure how to conduct focus groups? Here is a comprehensive template that will help you to take better notes and record your findings during the focus group meeting.

4. Marketing strategy template

The plan of action from your market research should become a vital part of your marketing strategy. We've actually created a marketing strategy template that you could download and use to update your marketing personas, your SWOT analysis, and your marketing channel strategies.

Market research examples

Here are some examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in market research. Some brands thrive on research and some ignore it completely. Take a look.

McDonald's

McDonald’s sells its food in 97 countries around the world. Their secret? They do a lot of market research before they launch anything. The company uses four key questions in their research process:

• Which products are performing well?
• What prices are most affordable to customers?
• What are consumers reading and watching?
• What content do they consume?
• Which restaurants are most attended, and why?

They also extensively use customer feedback to improve their products. They even put some products up for a vote to see which ones are most loved by their customers.

The iconic coffee brand is valued at almost $30 billion and has over 30,000 coffee shops around the world and part of that success comes from their obsession with customer service. They launched a brilliant idea called “My Starbucks Idea” to try and make the customer feel a part of the journey.

It was an open innovation platform where customers could post their idea for a new coffee drink or food item and if it was good a company representative would actually reach out to them. It had a leaderboard and every year the company would develop some of these ideas.

In 2012, Starbucks launched 73 coffee products from ideas they received from customers. Cake pops and pumpkin spice lattes were born out of this platform, all thanks to market research. Can you imagine a world without pumpkin spice lattes?

For all its innovation Facebook had an epic market research failure. In 2013, Facebook partnered with HTC to launch a smartphone called First. It had Facebook’s interface on its home screen and that was a really jarring change for most people. Instead of taking you to a home screen with your favorite apps, Facebook really took center stage.

To be fair, you could turn it off and get a regular Android home window but that would be missing the entire reason you bought the phone in the first place. So it was a complete mismatch to consumers’ wants and the phone flopped.

Turns out, that nobody wanted to see Facebook when they first opened their phone 😅.

Bloom & Wild

Bloom & Wild is a UK flower delivery brand that was looking for their next campaign. They did some research and found out that people think red roses are cliche and prefer to buy something else as a gift on Valentine’s Day. So the brand chose not to sell roses for Valentine’s Day 2021 and made it into a “No Roses Campaign”.

The results - they saw a 51% increase in press coverage year after year.

Top tools used for market research

Here are some of the top market research and digital analytics tools you should try out for your next research project.

Answer the Public

Answer the public is a free market research tool that helps marketers figure out what questions people ask online. It's really easy to use. You put in a keyword or topic and it spits out a whole variety of questions and subtopics.

Spyfu is a search engine analytics platform that gives you data on where your competitors get their traffic from. It provides info on the kind of both organic traffic and PPC channels down to the specific keywords people used to find each site. It's a great tool to use to map the competitive landscape.

Think with Google

This is an online publication from Google's team where they publish consumer insights from real-time data and their own insights. It uses Google Analytics but presents it to you as a library of information. You can find industry data on a whole array of businesses from educational institutions to counseling services.

Want to do the most extensive market research possible? Use SimilarWeb. It's a competitive analysis and data tool that provides you with literally everything you need.

It has data on:

• Digital marketing data - SEO, traffic, advertising
• Economic trends - economic indicators like annual growth rate, audience, benchmarking
• eCommerce, investing, and even sales data

BuzzSumo is a great tool to use to get actionable insights from social media and content marketing. It aggregates data from various social media channels and shows you the type of content that users engage with and share on their pages.

Typeform is a survey tool that can help you make surveys and fun interactive forms. It's a great tool to use to make your forms more engaging for your audience. The tool has a bunch of easy templates and a ton of integrations to help you visualize that data and share it with your team.

Latana is a brand research tool that helps you understand consumer perception of your brand over time. It helps you answer some key questions about the type of values your customers have, and the type of audiences your competitors are targeting and helps you to focus your campaigns on the right audience for your business.

Statista is one of the most popular consumer data platforms around. It has a wealth of information about consumer markets, business conditions, and industry trends around the world. It's easier to use than most business publications because it aggregates all the data you need in one place. The downside is that it's a little pricy but perfect for teams that have the budget for it.

Dimensions.ai

Dimensions is a search engine for academic publications. It is a great resource if you're looking for deeper insights into things like psychology, micro and macroeconomics, and business trends. A lot of the articles are free to view just make sure you select the " All OA " option which stands for Open Access research.

Otter is an AI-powered transcription software for interviews and meetings. It sits in the background and transcribes your meeting for you and then provides you with a digitized conversation that can be stored, search for specific keywords, and analyzed. It's a great tool to use for doing interviews.

Yelp is a search engine for reviews of local businesses. It's one of the best sources of opinions about a whole variety of products and services. It's a great place to get ideas about the kind of interview questions you want to ask, to find out the pain points of your ideal customer, and to find deeper insights into your target audience.

You have to conduct your market research regularly if you want to see significant results. Try the different methods that we’ve outlined, see what works for you, and remember to keep your team’s focus on the customer. The more knowledgeable they are of your target customer’s needs and wants the better your targeting and marketing strategy will be.

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A Guide on How to Create a Market Research Report

A market research report provides valuable insights into consumer behaviors, market trends, competitive analysis, and the overall health of specific industries.

This document serves as a roadmap for businesses to strategize effectively, identify new opportunities, and mitigate risks.

In this article, we will walk you through the essential components of a market research report, the steps to create one, and best practices to ensure that your findings are actionable and accurate.

What is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a comprehensive document that gathers data about market conditions, customer preferences, competition, and other factors affecting an industry or business. It synthesizes primary and secondary research to present an analysis that helps companies make strategic decisions. The report covers various aspects, from demographic data and consumer surveys to industry trends and competitive dynamics.

Types of Market Research Reports

Market research reports can vary based on the objectives and the scope of the study. Here are some common types:

• Consumer Analysis Reports: Focus on customer demographics, preferences, and behavior to tailor products and marketing strategies.
• Competitive Analysis Reports: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors within the market, offering insights into competitive advantages and potential opportunities.
• Industry Analysis Reports: Provide a broad overview of the industry, including trends, size, and growth forecasts.
• Product Testing Reports: Gather feedback from users about a new or existing product to inform product development and improvement.
• Brand Loyalty Reports: Analyze customer loyalty and satisfaction to help develop strategies to enhance customer retention.

What Does a Market Research Report Include?

A well-rounded market research report generally contains the following elements:

• Executive Summary: A concise overview of key findings and recommendations, allowing readers to quickly understand the report's essence.
• Introduction: Contextualizes the research, including objectives and questions that the report aims to address.
• Methodology: Describes the research methods used to collect data, whether through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or secondary data sources.
• Market Analysis: Detailed analysis of the market, including size, trends, growth patterns, and environmental factors.
• Competitive Landscape: Assessment of key players in the industry, their market share, strategies, and products.
• Customer Insights: Analysis of customer demographics, buying behaviors, preferences, and needs.
• Conclusions and Recommendations: Summarize the insights derived from the research and suggest actionable strategies based on the findings.

How to Create a Market Research Report in 5 Steps

Creating an effective market research report involves a structured approach:

• Define the Purpose: Clearly articulate what you want to achieve with the report. This will guide your research focus and methodology.
• Gather Information: Use both primary and secondary research to collect comprehensive data. Primary research could include surveys and interviews, while secondary research may involve reviewing existing studies, industry reports, and competitive data.
• Analyze Data: Interpret the data to identify patterns, insights, and correlations. Use statistical tools and software for accurate analysis.
• Draft the Report: Organize the findings in a structured format. Start with the executive summary, followed by the introduction, methodology, detailed findings, and conclusions.
• Review and Revise: Ensure the report is clear, accurate, and free from bias. It may be helpful to have peers or stakeholders review the document before finalizing it.

Best Practices for Creating a Market Research Report

To enhance the effectiveness of your market research report, consider these best practices:

• Stay Objective: Maintain impartiality to ensure the report is unbiased and reliable.
• Use Visuals: Incorporate charts, graphs, and infographics to make data easier to understand and more engaging.
• Keep It Concise: Be clear and concise, avoiding overly complex language or excessive detail that may distract from the key insights.
• Segment the Data: Provide segmented analysis to offer more detailed insights into different customer groups or market segments.
• Update Regularly: Market conditions change rapidly, so it’s important to update your reports periodically to keep them relevant.

Create a Market Research Report Using Tome

Presenting your market research effectively is key to influencing strategic decisions.

With Tome, you can effortlessly craft detailed, insightful presentations that communicate complex data in an understandable and engaging manner.

Start leveraging Tome today to enhance the impact of your market research reports and drive meaningful action.

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What is a Marketing Research Report and How to Write It

In essence, a market research report is a document that reveals the characteristics of your ideal customers, their buying habits, the value your product or service can bring to them, and the list of your top competitors.

The marketing research report paints a picture of what kinds of new products or services may be the most profitable in today’s highly competitive landscape. For products or services already available, a marketing research report can provide detailed insights as to whether they are meeting their consumers’ needs and expectations. It helps understand the reasons why consumers buy a particular product by studying consumer behavior, including how economic, cultural, societal, and personal factors influence that behavior.

Furthermore, the purpose of writing a marketing research report is to make calculated decisions about business ideas – whether they’re worth pursuing or not. This requires one primary skill which is observing the pattern which is hidden in the User Generated Content (UGC) written in different tones and perspectives on the social web.

Simply put, writing a market research report is a vital part of planning business activities and serves as a neat way to assimilate all the information about your target market and prospective customers.

Now, there are two key varieties of marketing research report formats – primary and secondary.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Let’s take a look at the main recipes of how to make a market research report in detail:

Primary Research

This method of marketing research involves gathering firsthand information about your market and prospective clients. You study your customers directly by conducting:

• Interviews (either by telephone or face-to-face)
• Surveys and polls (online or by email)
• Questionnaires (online or by email)
• Focus groups discussions with a sample of potential customers and getting their direct feedback

Some crucial questions that you need to ask your prospective customers in your primary research are:

• What are the factors that motivate you to purchase this product or service?
• What do you like or dislike about this type of product or service already available on the market?
• Are there any areas you’d like to suggest for improvement?
• What according to you is the appropriate price for this product or service?

Primary research also involves analyzing competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps and weaknesses that you can turn into your strengths.

Secondary Research

The second method of writing a marketing research report is all about analyzing the data that has already been published and using the available information on the web. That is, secondary research is done from reliable reports and statistics found on the websites of other organizations or authority blogs in your industry.

Sources can be:

• Public: This includes all the free sources like social media and forums, Google Trends, YouGov, and government sources such as the United States Census Bureau.
• Commercial: This includes industry insights compiled by research agencies like Pew, Gartner, Forrester, and so on. Typically, these are paid.
• Internal: This is the historical market data your organization already has in-house, such as the Net Promoter Score, customer churn rate, and so on.

Secondary data can help you identify competitors, establish benchmarks, and determine target customer segments or demographics – people who live a certain lifestyle, their income and buying patterns, age group, location, etc.

Market Research Reports Advantages and Disadvantages

Before we discuss how to write a marketing research report, let’s quickly take a look at market research report benefits and also some of the limitations in marketing research reports.

Advantages of Market Research Report

Here are the top reasons why you should invest in creating a market research report.

1. Gives a Better Understanding of Your Customers

The answers to questions like who will buy your product, what are the customers’ pain points, what motivates their buying behavior, and so on will be effectively answered with a market research report. Essentially, it will help you map out the full profile of your ideal customer and consequently, allow you to create tailored products and marketing campaigns.

2. Helps Spot Business Opportunities

As already mentioned, market research will give you insights about your competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps in their offerings that you can turn into your product’s strengths. You may also find other business opportunities such as potential partnerships with brands that sell complementary products, or an opportunity to better upsell or cross-sell your products. For example, a keyword research report from a SaaS SEO agency provides an opportunity to acquire organic search ranking by creating in-depth, high-converting, and funnel-oriented content.

3. Minimizes Risks

Starting or running a business is synonymous with risk. In fact, nearly half of all small businesses with employees don’t survive for more than five years. Conducting proper market research frequently will allow you to stay on top of trends, and not waste your efforts and resources in things that would likely be fruitless.

For instance, before you launch a new product, conducting market research gives you a much better idea of the demand for your product. Or if an existing product is seeing a big drop in sales, market research helps you determine the root cause of the issue.

4. Facilitates Data-Driven Decision Making

When it comes to business decisions – data over guesswork, always. So, based on your market research results, you can make more informed decisions regarding the pricing, distribution channels, and marketing budget of your products.

Disadvantages of Market Research Report

As with anything, there are a couple of downsides to conducting marketing research as well.

1. Could Be an Expensive Activity

Conducting a comprehensive, in-depth research is usually a costly activity in terms of both time and money. To research the right audience with the right questions requires you to invest a lot of time. If you wish to use data by commercial market research agencies or get help from one such agency in conducting primary research, be prepared to spend a substantial amount.

2. Insights Gathered Could Be Inadequate or Even Inaccurate

Another problem often faced in marketing research is a lack of respondents. While you can figure out who is your target audience, getting them to fill out surveys and questionnaires can indeed be challenging. Plus, you’re using data you collected for drawing conclusions, which may be unreliable.

For example, by the time you act on the data you collected, it may have become outdated. This translates into poor decision making and the whole process may become counterproductive.

How to Prepare Market Research Report

Now, here are some concrete steps and guidelines for writing a marketing research report.

Step 1: Cluster the Data

First off, compile all the relevant data you’ve accumulated from your primary and/or secondary research efforts. Survey results, interview answers, statistics from third-party sources – bring it all together and then analyze the information to sketch out the profile of your target market.

Step 2: Prepare an Outline

Next, create a skeleton of the report so that you understand what information will go where. An outline with sections and subsections will help you structure your marketing research report properly. A typical report includes an introduction, background and methodology, executive summary, results, and a conclusion with links to all references.

With an outline in front of you, start by writing the front matter of your report – an introduction that provides a brief overview of your business and the reason you conducted the market research. Include a summary of the market research process and the results you have analyzed. For instance, you might have been gauging the feasibility of a new product, so summarize that your market research report is for a new product launch.

Step 3: Mention the Research Methods

An important next step is to clearly mention the methods used to conduct the research. That is, if you conducted polls, specify the number of polls, the percentage of responses, the types of people or businesses targeted, and the questions included in the poll. Tag all the resources for demographic information, such as census data.

Step 4: Include Visuals With Narrative Explanation

Visuals such as charts and graphs are an important part of any research paper. They make sure that the findings are easy to comprehend.

So, create tables, graphs, and/or charts illustrating the results of the research. Accompany it with a narrative explanation of the visual data. Highlight the inferences you made based on this data.

Step 5: Conclude the Report With Recommendations

Finally, conclude your report with a section that lists actionable recommendations based on the research results to facilitate decision making. For example, all the numbers may point to the conclusion that your customers desire a particular feature that no other product on the market is currently offering. In this case, it is clear that it’s a good idea to invest your resources in providing that feature and gain a competitive edge.

At the very end of the report, include reference links to all the sources and an appendix for supplementary materials and further reading.

Marketing Research Report Templates

Before you go, check out some templates and samples you can use to better understand the marketing research report structure, and maybe even use them to kickstart your report instead of preparing one from scratch.

• Market Research Report for New Product Launch
• Market Research Report for Restaurant (competitor analysis)
• Social Media Market Research Report

Writing a marketing research report is a tried-and-true way to gain a solid understanding of your target audience and competitors while enabling you to make more informed decisions and minimize investment risks. Sure, it may take considerable time, effort, and even money to conduct thorough research and prepare a report, but when done well, the ROI of it all is well worth it.

Shahid Abbasi is an SEO strategy & campaign manager at Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

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6 Real Market Research Report Examples To Inspire You

• ViB Editorial Team
• May 14, 2024

Table of Contents

If you’re looking for market research report examples, you’re in the right place. Even in B2B tech, it’s no secret market research is a key component to businesses seeking long-term viability and brand success. From better understanding consumer segments to creating powerful research-backed content, and even developing future-proof product roadmaps, market research is the cornerstone of strategic decision-making.

In fact, 89% of marketers surveyed by Hubspot reported that leveraging the market research they performed had a positive quantitative impact on their business.

But, creating a piece of valuable research for your tech company can feel… a little hard to imagine.

What are the best market research topics for my B2B tech industry? What is the larger story to tell to subtly reinforce my company’s positioning?

What questions should I ask? Who should I ask? What about… how long should a research report be? How do I present my findings?  You probably have a million questions. And I’d love to answer them all by showing you some of the best market research report examples that we’ve gathered along the way.

B2B organizations must have a solid awareness of their industry space and the current market trends to stay relevant in an ever-competitive digital landscape.

Market research report examples to get inspo from

As a leading market research vendor in the B2B tech space, we’ve helped a ton of B2B tech marketers like you with:

• Full-service third-party market research projects
• Respondent recruiting, data collection, and data analysis
• Creation of market research reports in each client’s brand
• Generating demand using research-backed content

Sounds similar to your goals?

Whether you’re here for some inspo, or want to evaluate our work, let’s dig into some market research report examples we could all learn a thing or two from.👇

1 - Snyk: Infrastructure as code security

Snyk is a developer security platform that enables application and cloud developers to secure their whole application.

They recently conducted the Infrastructure as Code Security Insights report to provide insights on the state of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) deployment and the challenges faced by developers in securing their code, infrastructure configuration, and containers. 

The goal of the report? To help organizations understand the benefits of automated security testing for IaC definitions, the roadblocks to the widespread use of IaC, and how organizations differ in their approaches to using IaC. 

With that, we helped Snyk form a story around IaC and recruited hundreds of IT professionals across industries and company sizes. 

That gave us a clear, comprehensive understanding of the need for organizations to prioritize IaC security and implement best practices to ensure the reliability and security of their infrastructure. 

Some findings that helped position them as a valuable player in their industry include👇

• 63% of companies are just beginning to explore IaC technology, while only 7% have implemented IaC to the best of current industry capabilities.
• 71% of companies would prefer to standardize on a common toolset/workflow across all IaC configuration types and formats.
• A lack of standardized workflow and practices was the leading reason respondents chose to remediate a security issue manually.
• 61% of respondents pointed to speed-related issues as a reason for remediating a security issue manually.

💡 Tip: Incorporate your branding

What I also love about Snyk’s report is its strong branding, alongside objective results obtained through an independent survey through our team at ViB. 

That’s major because typically, most marketing teams have one or the other. 

• Strong branding through a survey conducted in-house that’s potentially perceived as biased
• Or an independent survey conducted by an external research vendor, but without any individual branding because of limitations in ownership and usage.

If you ask me, having the best of both worlds helps Snyk reinforce its brand leadership and credibility at the same time. Win-win!

🚀 See how Snyk designed their branded report here.

Moving on, let’s take a look at some other great market research report examples.

2 - Illumio: Security segmentation report

Illumio is a cybersecurity company that specializes in providing solutions for micro-segmentation and security.

The first platform for breach containment, Illumio recently published a report, The State of Security Segmentation, which dives into the ways organizations can protect against the lateral movement that leads to breaches.

The goal of the report? To get a better understanding of how companies segment today and what difficulties they face.

Likewise, with the help of ViB Research , Illumio surveyed over 300+ IT professionals in their specialized cybersecurity industry. They were then able to highlight the critical role of segmentation in enhancing network security, and the shift away from traditional firewalls in favor of more agile and cost-effective solutions. 

Some of the biggest takeaways for tech professionals from Illumio’s report are:

• More than half of the respondents do not have and are not planning segmentation in the next six months.
• Two-thirds of respondents think the firewall is an over-the-hill gold digger when it comes to segmentation.
• Today’s IT norm is hybrid: on-prem data centers and multiple clouds.
• Security incidents are inevitable.

💡Tip: Repurpose your report into derivative content

In this market research report example , what Illumio did brilliantly was repurposing.

Illumio repurposed a single market report into a range of thought leadership content and used it across demand generation channels.

“Once the survey was launched, it took about 4-6 weeks when we had the results in our hands, where we were able to just run with it and build Illumio's first State of Security Segmentation report, and enough snackable content to repurpose in social, email, content syndication , and other demand generation channels. I definitely highly recommend this service.” Jaye Liang, Senior Marketing Manager at Illumio

For example, using insights from the report they created with ViB, Illumio developed the whitepaper — Decoupling Security from the Network: The Evolution of Segmentation .

The lesson here: while a single research report feels like a big investment, it can function as a launch pad for repurposing value-added content that’s easily shareable across all segments of your target audience.

Get an exclusive look into the State of Segmentation Report and a copy of Illumio’s topical whitepaper, Decoupling Security from the Network: The Evolution of Segmentation, which builds on their market research report.

🚀 Download their sample report and whitepaper today.

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3 - split: feature management and experimentation.

Split is “a feature delivery platform that pairs speed and reliability of feature flags with data to measure the impact of every feature.” 

This year, Split conducted its Feature Management & Experimentation Impact Report which examined the challenges and areas for improvement in these practices, as well as the adoption and impact of feature releases on business and user experience.

This report was based on a survey of over 300 software professionals who came from a variety of backgrounds (engineering, development, product management, etc.). 

Some highlights from the survey are below 👇

• 92% of respondents either agree or completely agree that software feature management is critical to developing and releasing successful digital experiences.
• 50% feel that easily pinpointing unexpected issues during a feature rollout is an important priority.
• 60% felt that their top area for improvement involved software feature release quality and reliability.
• 14% have implemented a feature experiment platform; 39% are investigating, 29% plan to implement.

Organizations that roll out software features on demand often show lower levels of involvement in feature management and experimentation compared to their more deliberate counterparts.

The data does show strong moves toward adopting feature management and experimentation . It’s clear that the industry is moving in this direction, and now is the right time to take action if you want to stay competitive with digital industry leaders.

💡 Tip: Actively promote your research report

Similar to how Illumio created a range of repurposed content, Split is taking an active step toward promoting its market research report. 

Spot this feature of the research report live on Split’s home page for example.

By commissioning ViB to do their research, Split was able to use and promote the content on any channel without any need for further licensing fees or permissions .

Often, research vendors have a pretty strict list of recirculation restrictions, or an additional price tag of a few grand just to reuse and reshare the published materials.

🚀 Check out Split’s report here.

4 - Siemplify: Remote security operations

Siemplify recently acquired by Google, is an intuitive workbench that enables security teams to both manage risk and reduce the cost of addressing threats.

Launched in early 2021, Siemplify conducted a Remote Security Operations study that looked at how COVID-19 and the need to work from home affected the ability of SecOps professionals to do their security work.

The report delves into key findings on the threat impact, people impact, and the path forward.

It was based on a survey of hundreds of IT professionals in leadership positions. Respondents also worked at organizations with over 1,000 employees on average. 

Let’s take a look at some of their most notable findings👇

• 51% of respondents said investigating suspicious activities became more difficult due to balancing security and corporate demand.
• 47% of respondents said collaboration and communication suffered naturally, making everyday tasks more challenging.
•  Roughly one-third of respondents reported seeing an increase in network intrusions, malware, ransomware, and vulnerabilities.

Incidents of phishing have increased for 57% of respondents, topping the list.

💡 Tip: Be the first to capture an emerging trend

With Siemplify, the key takeaway was their smart choice of topic.

This report was conducted immediately after the lockdown and released shortly after. 

Within a year of the onset of the pandemic, they leveraged an ongoing and developing issue, tailored it to their industry. They were able to launch original data about a hot topic , standing out against the content their competitors were pushing.

And then by working with ViB, they were able to push for a specific story (some vendors will only commission research for a predetermined list of topics that they’ve set). 

Within weeks , we collaboratively produced a completed report, allowing the company to quickly respond to an emerging trend.

👉 See how Siemplify angled their report here

Now, let’s move on to the rest of our B2B market research report examples .

5 - Softchoice: Cloud Enabled AI

Softchoice is a software-focused IT solutions provider that equips organizations to be efficient, agile, and innovative. 

The Cloud Enabled AI report explores the potential of AI and ML (machine learning) in the cloud, revealing opportunities and barriers to their implementation. 

Some of the most impactful takeaways are 👇

• Despite understanding that analytics, AI, and ML will have a transformative impact on industries in the coming five years, many organizations are falling behind in integrating them.
• 46% of respondents believe that a multi-cloud approach is very important, with 14% considering it extremely important.
• The most common barriers to leveraging the full benefits of analytics, AI, and ML are a lack of in-house expertise (38%) and difficulty implementing AI and ML solutions (22%).

💡 Tip: How to recruit targeted respondent from niche industries

This report was based on a survey of over 200 IT professionals across 18 different industries.

What was great about Softchoice’s report example is their specificity in targeting.

Together with ViB’s help in respondent recruiting, Softchoice was able to connect with IT professionals in:

• Business intelligence
• Data analytics
• Product development
• Cloud architecture and operations

Their ability to reach these specific profiles? The ViB Community , a network of millions of precisely segmented IT professionals. 

By reaching out to our expansive community, ViB is able to find hundreds of targeted respondents to be the backbone of each client’s research, even if it’s a niche topic.

🚀 See how Softchoice explores the the impact AI and ML on the cloud . Let’s now proceed to the last of our market research report examples. 

6 - Palo Alto Networks: SOAR

Palo Alto Networks is a multi-national cybersecurity company aimed at offering next-gen firewall solutions.

Their SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response) report examined incident response and the use of SOAR technology.

This report focused on the challenges, tools used, and desired capabilities of security professionals whose incident response functions were mostly in-house. 

Some of their most notable findings👇

• SOAR tools are becoming increasingly popular across the incident response lifecycle, with a healthy and growing percentage of common tools used for every lifecycle stage.
• Respondents desired a common platform for cross-team investigation and automated remote execution of actions across security tools.
• Over 80% of respondents either performed incident response in-house or augmented an in-house team with consultants. 
• Respondents identified an ‘evidence board’ and ‘attack reconstruction’ as abilities they needed but currently lacked. 

Conducted by ViB, the survey methodology incorporated extensive quality control systems at three levels: targeting, in-survey behavior, and post-survey analysis. Over 500 respondents participated across security job functions and industries.

What’s even better, was Palo Alto’s ability to leverage their report to generate demand and improve sales pipeline .

💡 Tip: Use your research for lead generation

The client first built a full library of over 10 content assets, all stemming from the market research report, through a range of lead generation campaigns and industry events, the team was then able to attract new prospects and boost conversions

For example, Palo Alto presented their findings in C-level events, along with multiple media interviews.

The best part was their results . 

Content campaigns built on the ViB research and the resulting materials generated a whopping $3M in pipeline and led to $2M closed/won revenue for the company — all attributed to this report and the corresponding assets created.

🔎 See more about the report here , or read their story here .

Best B2B Market Research Tools for Marketing Research Functions

B2B Market Research Services vs. In-House Research: How to Decide?

How to Conduct Market Research Without Breaking The Bank

What can we take away from these market research report examples.

Now, each of these reports used real-time consumer feedback, giving the company a slew of notable takeaways and data that could easily be repurposed across channels. 

The differentiating factor? 

Each worked with a B2B market research company that had the tools, resources, and expertise to effectively and comprehensively perform the research needed to get the information desired.

I’m talking about ViB Research , the custom B2B market research service powering these 6 incredible market research report examples we just saw.

See how Robert and others easily build libraries of differentiated content from a single research report .

Discover everything you need to know about ViB Research, including how it works and its success stories through our comprehensive video walkthrough.

There’s no denying the sheer magnitude of information available in each of these reports– and this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

With the use of consumer data and resources to repurpose value-add content , your business and bottom line will make worries about strategic decision-making and business growth a thing of the past.

Getting started with ViB Research

Whether you’re looking to generate competitive intelligence reports, thought leadership strategy, or consumer behavior reports, ViB has the resources, expertise, and proven track record to accelerate your pipeline and drive business growth.

Want more info about how our research process works? Download our ViB Research datasheet , or chat with a team member today!

Interested in market research for your business?

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Marketing Reporting Examples: How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports

Run marketing reports that better inform your decisions, bolster your marketing resources, and help your organization grow better.

MONTHLY MARKETING REPORTING TEMPLATES

Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Drive Templates to Make Your Monthly Reporting Faster and Easier

Updated: 11/03/23

Published: 03/21/14

As a marketer, I make crucial daily decisions that can impact the company I work for. Using my best judgment, I track important metrics like traffic, leads, and customers — and I provide a marketing report to back up my decisions.

While the above metrics are crucial to my marketing funnel and flywheel , a marketing report helps me further explore my findings and properly analyze the data to make the best decisions I can for my team and company.

Marketing reports aren‘t just vital for my work, they’re key to any marketer looking to do what‘s right for their organization. In this article, we’ll explore what a marketing report is and how to build one, and we'll spotlight some examples.

Marketing Reporting

Marketing reporting examples, how to create a marketing report, create your marketing report today.

Marketing reporting is the process of gathering and analyzing marketing metrics to inform future marketing decisions, strategies, and performance. Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.

Marketing reports vary depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report. They can assess where your traffic and leads are coming from, what content they interacted with, if and when they converted, and how long it took to become a customer.

Take our free, 20-minute HubSpot Academy course on marketing reporting to measure success and optimize your efforts.

To reiterate: Marketing reports inform decisions .

You wouldn’t run a marketing report to review data performance or check on an ongoing goal — for these purposes, you’d glance at your marketing dashboards.

Look at it this way. Compiling a marketing report for knowledge’s sake is synonymous with scheduling a meeting to review a project. Who wants to attend a 30-minute session to review what could've been shared via email? Not me.

The same goes for marketing reporting. Reports should help you decide or come to an important conclusion — similar to how a meeting would help your team deliberate about a project or choose between project resources.

In short, marketing reporting is a precious process if used and crafted correctly.

Marketing Reporting Templates

• Track leads.
• Measure CVR.
• Track channel performance.

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There are hundreds of reports that you can run to dig into your marketing efforts. At this point, however, you’re likely asking, “Where should I start?“ and ”What are those basic marketing reports I can run to get more comfortable with all the data I’ve been tracking?”.

We’ve pulled together these five marketing reporting examples to get started.

You will need some marketing software (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) to do this. You should also ensure your software allows you to export the data from your software and manipulate it in Excel using pivot tables and other functions.

This free guide and video will teach you how to create an Excel graph, make pivot tables, and use VLOOKUPS and IF functions.

Since we use HubSpot for our reporting needs, I'll show you how to compile these reports using the Marketing Hub tool. (The data below is sample data only and does not represent actual HubSpot marketing data.)

1. Multi-Touch Revenue Marketing Report

As a marketer, you’re a big part of your company’s growth. But unless you can directly tie your impact to revenue, you’ll be forever underappreciated and under-resourced. Multi-touch revenue attribution connects closed gain to every marketing interaction — from the first page view to the final nurturing email.

That way, marketers get the credit they deserve, and marketing execs make more innovative investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, multi-touch revenue attribution can help you stay aligned with your sales team.

HubSpot customers can create multi-touch attribution reports quickly; HubSpot’s attribution tool is built for real people, not data scientists. (It also connects every customer interaction to revenue automatically.)

Navigate to your dashboard and click Add Report > Attribution Report . Select from the set of pre-baked best-practice templates, or create your own custom report.

How to Analyze Revenue Reporting

To analyze revenue reporting, determine what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you most succeeded. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward.

For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!

Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is necessary, you should dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.

2. Channel-Specific Traffic Marketing Report

Understanding where your traffic comes from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. You should invest more resources if you see strong performance from one source.

On the other hand, you can invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.

HubSpot customers can use the Traffic Analytics report (under Reports > Analytics tools in your navigation) to break down traffic by source.

Want to get an even deeper understanding of your traffic patterns? Break down your traffic by geography. (Example: Which sources bring in the most traffic in Brazil?) You can also examine subsets of your website (like your blog vs. your product pages).

6. Email Marketing Report

When I want to assess my email marketing campaign, I take a look at the following KPIs:

• Number of emails sent
• Unique open rate
• Overall campaign performance

These metrics allow me to analyze the effectiveness of my campaigns by showing me what kind of content performs best in email channels.

7. Social Media Marketing Report

To track the performance of your social media channels, your social marketing report needs to include target audience demographics, likes, followers, engagement, reach, impressions, and your top-performing posts.

Knowing your target audience demographics helps you to better understand the kind of content that would be helpful to them.

For example, if your target audience demographics consist of first-time business owners who are new to marketing, you'll want to create social media content media content best suited to beginners.

Likes, comments, and overall engagement help you fine-tune your social media campaign by showing you which content your current audience prefers.

Furthermore, you‘ll need to track these metrics for each of your organization’s social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, X, and more.

8. SEO Marketing Report

I always include the following in my SEO marketing reports:

• Keyword rankings
• Organic sessions
• Organic landing pages
• Organic conversions

These metrics show how well certain keywords are working to rank your content in SERPs, so you and your team will know which words to rank keep ranking for and if there are any changes in SERP algorithms you need to be aware of.

9. E-commerce Marketing Report

E-commerce marketing occurs over various marketing channels, including social media and Google Analytics. Key metrics you must track are:

• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Transactions
• Pages per session
• Average order value

As I said, you can run many different marketing reports.

This section won’t focus on what specific data to put into your marketing report — that will depend on what type you decide to run. Remember, that process is a bit different if you’re building a marketing dashboard.

Let's discuss how to build marketing reports that inform your decisions and benefit your audience, whether your team, CEO, or customers.

Featured Tool: Marketing Reporting Templates [ Download for Free ]

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Templates to Make Your Monthly Reporting Faster and Easier

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17 Marketing Report Examples with Free Dashboards Templates

Table of contents

To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

On average, companies with fewer than 49 employees have three staff members on their marketing team .

Organizations with more than 5,000 employees typically have a 45-strong marketing team.

What do they both have in common? Both small and large marketing teams need to package and communicate performance on a regular basis to:

• Stakeholders
• CEOs or Founders
• Direct reports
• and more…

According to Databox’s state of business reporting , almost half of the companies report on their marketing performance at least once a week, which makes marketing one of the most frequently reported operations. This abundance of reports can be overwhelming. So, how do you create a marketing report that people actually want to read?

We asked 19 marketers from a range of industries to share how they format their reports–some sharing screenshots of what their reports actually look like. This guide shares their answers.

* Editor’s note : Want a better way to create marketing reports your team wants to look at? Instead of fiddling around with Excel formulas and formatting, browse our range of dashboards . They’re all totally customizable for you to add your most important KPIs in one place:

1. Social Media Overview

The Capitol Tech Solutions team says their social media reports are formatted differently than our SEO reports, as Kevin Olson explains: “The first page of the report is an overview.”

“The overview breaks down performance by ad, ad group, key demographics, key events, and locations (if we are geo-targeting several different specific locations).”

“The pages following that one change based on what the client wants to see in the report.”

2. Business Efficiency by Segment

Hexe Data ‘s Krzysztof Surowiecki says: “I share with my clients the report showing business efficiency broke down into key segments. Individual segments resulting from the type of business, but also the general ones like source/medium, age, etc.”

“What also may be interesting is to show trends in long-term reports and projected future trends. The thought behind this is that the client has a history rating, and prediction allows them to make decisions today in the context of the development of their business.”

3. SEO and AdWords Conversions

Brendan Tully says: “At the start of 2019, [ The Search Engine Shop ] changed all our SEO and Adwords PPC reports to report conversions (calls, form inquiries and $$ through checkout) first and really make them the focus of the report.”

“At the same time, we moved many from monthly to weekly reporting. The focus on rankings and traffic is short-sighted for most businesses because what they actually want is conversions.”

“By focussing on conversions first we move the conversion from fairly meaningless “why don’t I rank higher for” so a much more commercially focussed conversion about leads, inquiries, sales and cost of acquisition,” Tully continues.

“Reporting weekly gives us a short enough time scale so we can adapt as necessary while also eliminating the day to day variance that’s typical with search traffic.”

In fact, Tully’s team isn’t using the standard timeline for reporting.

Over half of the companies we surveyed said they report on marketing performance monthly:

…Yet 64% of marketing teams say their bosses, clients, and stakeholders are more supportive when they receive performance reports on a weekly basis:

Similarly, Colby Hager’s team at Capstone Homebuyers adds: “One of the most important reports I share with my team is the conversion percentage related to search terms for pay per click (PPC) marketing.”

“This helps us understand which search terms tend to convert at a higher rate so we can properly allocate our budget on the right search phrases. It also informs us of any content updates needed on our website to reflect language being used in search terms that leads to higher rates of conversion.”

4. Google Ads Report

“One marketing report example that I share with my team and the client is the Google Ads report because we utilize Google Ads heavily,” says ClearPivot ‘s Karoline Kujawa.

“You can pull up this report in Google Ads itself or an integrated marketing system; for example HubSpot or Databox. That is what we use.”

“HubSpot integrates with Google Ads to pull a nice, detailed report that also indicates the recent form conversions from each campaign. That is the best part about HubSpot reporting that regular Google Ads can’t account for.”

Kujawa adds: “My clients tend to really like this report a lot because it allows us to analyze which campaign is driving the most sales qualified leads. It also allows us to determine ROI feedback.”

Bryan Ng of Bryan Digital also creates reports for Google Ads campaigns because “knowing when the Google Ads are being clicked gives my outdoor sales team a better idea of when to visit customers.”

“Knowing what devices are being used to click is equally important too. For example, if a click is from a computer, I can safely derive that this person is at his office.”

5. Ahrefs Dashboards

Ahrefs is an SEO tool used by thousands of marketers.

Maik Klijn says the team at VPN-Check use Ahrefs’ main dashboard because it “is a perfect way to find out what your rankings are in Google and what marketing [tasks] you must do to get a good blog content.”

Related : Here’s How to Use Ahrefs for SEO (According to 97 Marketers)

6. Weekly Lead Generation Report

“Every Friday at 5:00 pm we post a marketing report that shows the number of leads generated that week,” writes Jeremy Cross of Team Building Boston .

“This report is meant to show our marketing and sales team members where we are at, without taking a lot of time or analysis. If the number is higher than average or expected then we investigate why and see if we can make further improvements.”

Cross continues: “We have a similar process for lower than expected weeks for leads. The report itself is automatically generated by Zapier and posted to Slack, so it doesn’t require any additional time or effort to prepare.” Use this  marketing automation dashboard  to gain valuable insights about the number of leads generated from your marketing campaigns.

7. Custom Dimensions for Content Effectivenes

Jon Blumenfeld says that Nexthink “has a very large number of resources on our website.”

“These resources are categorized in our CMS in a variety of ways such as lifecycle stage, job role, etc. but one of the most important facets is the type.”

“We desired to know if there were certain types of content that were performing better than others at the top of the funnel, and to do this we set up a custom dimension in Google Analytics to track the types of content we have on the website.”

“On top of this, we implemented a custom metric to measure form fills across the website and used this custom metric in conjunction with the built-in page views metric to create a calculated metric for conversion rate,” Blumenfeld adds.

“We discovered very quickly that certain resources had a much higher volume of form fills as well as a much higher conversion rate.”

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
• New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
• Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
• Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
• Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot and Google Analytics 4 accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

8. Pillar and Cluster Content Performance

William Avila says that “every month, [ Rizen Inbound ] take time to show our clients how well their content is performing – paying particular attention to topic clusters.”

“We take pride in building comprehensive guides for audiences to enjoy, and showing clients how their content is working together to grow their brand is so important. Content efforts should build leads and build higher customer conversion rates. Share that good news!”

Related : The Topic Cluster Content Strategy Explained by Visiting a Casino

9. Organic Search Positions

According to Avinash Chandra, BrandLoom “always shares a report on organic search position with our client and this format is easy to understand and it summarizes very well all the relevant statistics related to the search result.”

Here’s what that looks like:

10. Case Study-Style Report

Marketing reports don’t have to be in the standard chart format we typically see.

“One example of a marketing report that we share with our clients is our results in the form of case studies,” Amy Hernandez of electrIQ marketing says.

“We find it most effective to put all our gathered information from a past project into a concise study that highlights that campaign’s goal, our approach and the results that came from our work.”

11. Marketing Funnel Report

Ilia Markov reports that ChartMogul “organize the report around our marketing funnel — readers, (email) subscribers, free trials, paying customers.”

“At each, we have a metric (and a way to measure that — either through GA or our product) and include that in the report that gets shared on our Slack channel each month.”

Related : Want More Signups? Track & Optimize Your Sales Funnel Like This Instead

12. Daily and Weekly Goal Performance

“While simple in nature, we send this report to a client on a daily basis,” writes MashMetrics ‘ Thomas Bosilevac.

Bosilevac continues: “Viewing yesterday, this week, and last week lets us see if our growth (or not!) is due to seasonality, part of a longer trend, or simply because we nailed a campaign! We can also view the conversion and total trend through the last year.)

13. ROI Calculations

It’s crucial to make sure that your marketing strategies generate more revenue than the budget you spend on them.

Our data shows that almost a third of marketers pull data from between six and 10 different sources to create their reports:

However, Greg Chapman of Empower Business Solutions has a unique approach to calculating return on investment: “When analyzing marketing campaigns, businesses often don’t include all costs associated with a sale.”

“In particular, internal costs both for marketing and different sales pipeline stages are neglected. This tool determines the total marketing cost per lead and total cost per sale in such a way that different campaigns can be compared and decisions made about their effectiveness.”

Databox Dashboards

14. overall social media metrics.

According to Dylan Zsigray, “nearly all of [ Kiwi Creative ‘s] clients use social media and track applicable data from each platform.”

“Within Databox, we create comprehensive Databoards for each platform so that clients can get relevant stats each month.”

“However, knowing that many executive leaders wish to have over-arching data for social media strategy, we also create an aggregate Databoard, where we add calculated metrics for similar stats from each platform.”

“For example, to track total engagements we add together likes, comments, shares, retweets, favorites, etc. from the respective platform. For those who wish to have high-level information to share, our aggregate Databoard provides this.”

15. Social Media Performance Report

“After testing a number of different analytics packages, we chose a marketing dashboard software like Databox because it is the only tool that allows us to combine data from Instagram with data from Google Analytics in one super easy-to-use and beautiful looking design that we can automatically send every week to our client and account team,” writes Steve Yanor of Sky Alphabet Social Media .

“Clients want to see the reports and they want to see progress, but they may be interested in only two or three KPIs among the hundreds that we actually track in our marketing dashboard .”

“In the example here, we’re showing monthly progress (last 30 days) of website impressions driven by an Instagram campaign, and we display a range of metrics about Instagram and how it impacts website visits.”

Yanor continues: “With this particular client, they were not using Instagram before so we wanted to highlight what a huge impact it was having on their web traffic and that Instagram generates offline search.”

“We do not know the exact reason for this but we suspect that people who do not want to leave Instagram at the moment, may return later and use a search to find what they saw during the campaign.”

“In this particular example, we were running a multi-image carousel showing before and after shots of various renovations concentrated in a geographic area. We were changing up the creative every week so that we would be hitting our targets with different visuals.”

“In the bottom left corner we like to track the top posts by engagement so that we are always focused on creating winning Instagram posts,” Yanor adds.

16. Video Marketing Success Reports

Nextiny also use Databox to create reports: “We include the typical metrics to make sure things are moving in the right direction, these include: video plays, play rate, engagement, CTR, etc,” says Gabriel Marguglio.

We also include “Total hours Watched” from website video views (Wistia) and Youtube video views. Total hours watched is a very important metric when thinking about brand affinity. Brand affinity grows with the amount of time that people spend engaging with your brand.”

Marguglio adds: “Another metric we like to include is the comparison between closing rates from leads to customers that haven’t watched video to the ones that made video part of their journey. This last metric shows the overall impact of video.”

17. Organic SEO Report Example

“One marketing report we share with clients on a monthly basis is our organic SEO report,” says SyncShow ‘s Cassie Simoniello.

“This report is a Databox widget that we built to showcase organic metrics from Google Analytics, SEMrush and Google Search Console.”

“Metrics we track within the organic report include organic sessions, top keywords by position, site audit score, domain rating and top organic landing pages by sessions.”

Simonello adds: “This widget gives us helpful insights into how our SEO efforts are playing out month-by-month. This report also touches on the most important aspects of SEO include on-site, off-site and technical.”

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, these marketing report examples prove that there’s more to reporting than confusing Excel formulas.

Whether you’re using a dashboard reporting tool or creating your own reports from scratch, make sure your reports don’t flop by including your most important marketing metrics.

Here are some round-up posts to help you determine those, by channel:

• 22 content marketing metrics
• 14 website engagement KPIs
• 20+ email marketing metrics
• 10 influencer marketing KPIs
• 24 social media metrics
• Databox Benchmarks
• Future Value Calculator
• ROI Calculator
• Return On Ads Calculator
• Percentage Growth Rate Calculator
• Report Automation
• Client Reporting
• What is a KPI?
• Google Sheets KPIs
• Sales Analysis Report
• Shopify Reports
• Data Analysis Report
• Google Sheets Dashboard
• Best Dashboard Examples
• Analysing Data
• Marketing Agency KPIs
• Automate Agency Google Ads Report
• Marketing Research Report
• Social Media Dashboard Examples
• Ecom Dashboard Examples

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14 Market Research Examples

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Example #1: National bank’s A/B testing

You can learn what customers want by conducting experiments on real-life customer decisions using A/B testing. When you ensure your tests do not have any validity threats, the information you garner can offer very reliable insights into customer behavior.

Here’s an example from Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, and the creator of its  online marketing course .

A national bank was working with MECLABS to discover how to increase the number of sign-ups for new checking accounts.

Customers who were interested in checking accounts could click on an “Open in Minutes” link on the bank’s homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized bank homepage

After clicking on the homepage link, visitors were taken to a four-question checking account selector tool.

Creative Sample #2: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool

After filling out the selector tool, visitors were taken to a results page that included a suggested package (“Best Choice”) along with a secondary option (“Second Choice”). The results page had several calls to action (CTAs). Website visitors were able to select an account and begin pre-registration (“Open Now”) or find out more information about the account (“Learn More”), go back and change their answers (“Go back and change answers”), or manually browse other checking options (“Other Checking Options”).

Creative Sample #3: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool results page

After going through the experience, the MECLABS team hypothesized that the selector tool wasn’t really delivering on the expectation the customer had after clicking on the “Open in Minutes” CTA. They created two treatments (new versions) and tested them against the control experience.

In the first treatment, the checking selector tool was removed, and instead, customers were directly presented with three account options in tabs from which customers could select.

Creative Sample #4: Checking account landing page Treatment #1

The second treatment’s landing page focused on a single product and had only one CTA. The call-to-action was similar to the CTA customers clicked on the homepage to get to this page — “Open Now.”

Creative Sample #5: Checking account landing page Treatment #2

Both treatments increased account applications compared to the control landing page experience, with Treatment #2 generating 65% more applicants at a 98% level of confidence.

Creative Sample #6: Results of bank experiment that used A/B testing

You’ll note the Level of Confidence in the results. With any research tactic or tool you use to learn about customers, you have to consider whether the information you’re getting really represents most customers, or if you’re just seeing outliers or random chance.

With a high Level of Confidence like this, it is more likely the results actually represent a true difference between the control and treatment landing pages and that the results aren’t just a random event.

The other factor to consider is — testing in and of itself will not produce results. You have to use testing as research to actually learn about the customer and then make changes to better serve the customer.

In the video How to Discover Exactly What the Customer Wants to See on the Next Click: 3 critical skills every marketer must master , McGlaughlin discussed this national bank experiment and explained how to use prioritization, identification and deduction to discover what your customers want.

This example was originally published in Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want .

Example #2: Consumer Reports’ market intelligence research from third-party sources

The first example covers A/B testing. But keep in mind, ill-informed A/B testing isn’t market research, it’s just hoping for insights from random guesses.

In other words, A/B testing in a vacuum does not provide valuable information about customers. What you are testing is crucial, and then A/B testing is a means to help better understand whether insights you have about the customer are either validated or refuted by actual customer behavior. So it’s important to start with some research into potential customers and competitors to inform your A/B tests.

For example, when MECLABS and MarketingExperiments (sister publisher to MarketingSherpa) worked with Consumer Reports on a public, crowdsourced A/B test, we provided a market intelligence report to our audience to help inform their test suggestions.

Every successful marketing test should confirm or deny an assumption about the customer. You need enough knowledge about the customer to create marketing messages you think will be effective.

For this public experiment to help marketers improve their split testing abilities, we had a real customer to work with — donors to Consumer Reports.

To help our audience better understand the customer, the MECLABS Marketing Intelligence team created the 26-page ConsumerReports Market Intelligence Research document (which you can see for yourself at that link).

This example was originally published in Calling All Writers and Marketers: Write the most effective copy for this Consumer Reports email and win a MarketingSherpa Summit package and Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough .

Example #3: Virtual event company’s conversation

What if you don’t have the budget for A/B testing? Or any of the other tactics in this article?

Well, if you’re like most people you likely have some relationships with other human beings. A significant other, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, customers, a nemesis (“Newman!”). While conducting market research by talking to these people has several validity threats, it at least helps you get out of your own head and identify some of your blind spots.

WebBabyShower.com’s lead magnet is a PDF download of a baby shower thank you card ‘swipe file’ plus some extras. “Women want to print it out and have it where they are writing cards, not have a laptop open constantly,” said Kurt Perschke, owner, WebBabyShower.com.

That is not a throwaway quote from Perschke. That is a brilliant insight, so I want to make sure we don’t overlook it. By better understanding customer behavior, you can better serve customers and increase results.

However, you are not your customer. So you must bridge the gap between you and them.

Often you hear marketers or business leaders review an ad or discuss a marketing campaign and say, “Well, I would never read that entire ad” or “I would not be interested in that promotion.” To which I say … who cares? Who cares what you would do? If you are not in the ideal customer set, sorry to dent your ego, but you really don’t matter. Only the customer does.

Perschke is one step ahead of many marketers and business leaders because he readily understands this. “Owning a business whose customers are 95% women has been a great education for me,” he said.

So I had to ask him, how did he get this insight into his customers’ behavior? Frankly, it didn’t take complex market research. He was just aware of this disconnect he had with the customer, and he was alert for ways to bridge the gap. “To be honest, I first saw that with my wife. Then we asked a few customers, and they confirmed it’s what they did also. Writing notes by hand is viewed as a ‘non-digital’ activity and reading from a laptop kinda spoils the mood apparently,” he said.

Back to WebBabyShower. “We've seen a [more than] 100% increase in email signups using this method, which was both inexpensive and evergreen,” Perschke said.

This example was originally published in Digital Marketing: Six specific examples of incentives that worked .

Example #4: Spiceworks Ziff Davis’ research-informed content marketing

Marketing research isn’t just to inform products and advertising messages. Market research can also give your brand a leg up in another highly competitive space – content marketing.

Don’t just jump in and create content expecting it to be successful just because it’s “free.” Conducting research beforehand can help you understand what your potential audience already receives and where they might need help but are currently being served.

When Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) published its annual State of IT report, it invested months in conducting primary market research, analyzing year-over-year trends, and finally producing the actual report.

“Before getting into the nuts and bolts of writing an asset, look at market shifts and gaps that complement your business and marketing objectives. Then, you can begin to plan, research, write, review and finalize an asset,” said Priscilla Meisel, Content Marketing Director, SWZD.

This example was originally published in Marketing Writing: 3 simple tips that can help any marketer improve results (even if you’re not a copywriter) .

Example #5: Business travel company’s guerilla research

There are many established, expensive tactics you can use to better understand customers.

But if you don’t have the budget for those tactics, and don’t know any potential customers, you might want to brainstorm creative ways you can get valuable information from the right customer target set.

Here’s an example from a former client of Mitch McCasland, Founding Partner and Director, Brand Inquiry Partners. The company sold a product related to frequent business flyers and was interested in finding out information on people who travel for a living. They needed consumer feedback right away.

“I suggested that they go out to the airport with a bunch of 20-dollar bills and wait outside a gate for passengers to come off their flight,” McCasland said. When people came off the flight, they were politely asked if they would answer a few questions in exchange for the incentive (the $20). By targeting the first people off the flight they had a high likelihood of reaching the first-class passengers.

This example was originally published in Guerrilla Market Research Expert Mitch McCasland Tells How You Can Conduct Quick (and Cheap) Research .

Example #6: Intel’s market research database

When conducting market research, it is crucial to organize your data in a way that allows you to easily and quickly report on it. This is especially important for qualitative studies where you are trying to do more than just quantify the data, but need to manage it so it is easier to analyze.

Anne McClard, Senior Researcher, Doxus worked with Shauna Pettit-Brown of Intel on a research project to understand the needs of mobile application developers throughout the world.

Intel needed to be able to analyze the data from several different angles, including segment and geography, a daunting task complicated by the number of interviews, interviewers, and world languages.

“The interviews were about an hour long, and pretty substantial,” McClard says. So, she needed to build a database to organize the transcripts in a way that made sense.

Different types of data are useful for different departments within a company; once your database is organized you can sort it by various threads.

The Intel study had three different internal sponsors. "When it came to doing the analysis, we ended up creating multiple versions of the presentation targeted to individual audiences," Pettit-Brown says.

The organized database enabled her to go back into the data set to answer questions specific to the interests of the three different groups.

This example was originally published in 4 Steps to Building a Qualitative Market Research Database That Works Better .

Example #7: National security survey’s priming

When conducting market research surveys, the way you word your questions can affect customers’ response. Even the way you word previous questions can put customers in a certain mindset that will skew their answers.

For example, when people were asked if they thought the U.S. government should spend money on an anti-missile shield, the results appeared fairly conclusive. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed thought the country should and only six percent were unsure, according to Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls .

But when pollsters added the option, "...or are you unsure?" the level of uncertainty leaped from six percent to 33 percent. When they asked whether respondents would be upset if the government took the opposite course of action from their selection, 59 percent either didn’t have an opinion or didn’t mind if the government did something differently.

This is an example of how the way you word questions can change a survey’s results. You want survey answers to reflect customer’s actual sentiments that are as free of your company’s previously held biases as possible.

This example was originally published in Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research .

Example #8: Visa USA’s approach to getting an accurate answer

As mentioned in the previous example, the way you ask customers questions can skew their responses with your own biases.

However, the way you ask questions to potential customers can also illuminate your understanding of them. Which is why companies field surveys to begin with.

“One thing you learn over time is how to structure questions so you have a greater likelihood of getting an accurate answer. For example, when we want to find out if people are paying off their bills, we'll ask them to think about the card they use most often. We then ask what the balance was on their last bill after they paid it,” said Michael Marx, VP Research Services, Visa USA.

This example was originally published in Tips from Visa USA's Market Research Expert Michael Marx .

Example #9: Hallmark’s private members-only community

Online communities are a way to interact with and learn from customers. Hallmark created a private members-only community called Idea Exchange (an idea you could replicate with a Facebook or LinkedIn Group).

The community helped the greeting cards company learn the customer’s language.

“Communities…let consumers describe issues in their own terms,” explained Tom Brailsford, Manager of Advancing Capabilities, Hallmark Cards. “Lots of times companies use jargon internally.”

At Hallmark they used to talk internally about “channels” of distribution. But consumers talk about stores, not channels. It is much clearer to ask consumers about the stores they shop in than what channels they shop.

For example, Brailsford clarified, “We say we want to nurture, inspire, and lift one’s spirits. We use those terms, and the communities have defined those terms for us. So we have learned how those things play out in their lives. It gives us a much richer vocabulary to talk about these things.”

This example was originally published in Third Year Results from Hallmark's Online Market Research Experiment .

Example #10: L'Oréal’s social media listening

If you don’t want the long-term responsibility that comes with creating an online community, you can use social media listening to understand how customers talking about your products and industry in their own language.

In 2019, L'Oréal felt the need to upgrade one of its top makeup products – L'Oréal Paris Alliance Perfect foundation. Both the formula and the product communication were outdated – multiple ingredients had emerged on the market along with competitive products made from those ingredients.

These new ingredients and products were overwhelming consumers. After implementing new formulas, the competitor brands would advertise their ingredients as the best on the market, providing almost magical results.

So the team at L'Oréal decided to research their consumers’ expectations instead of simply crafting a new formula on their own. The idea was to understand not only which active ingredients are credible among the audience, but also which particular words they use while speaking about foundations in general.

The marketing team decided to combine two research methods: social media listening and traditional questionnaires.

“For the most part, we conduct social media listening research when we need to find out what our customers say about our brand/product/topic and which words they use to do it. We do conduct traditional research as well and ask questions directly. These surveys are different because we provide a variety of readymade answers that respondents choose from. Thus, we limit them in terms of statements and their wording,” says Marina Tarandiuk, marketing research specialist, L'Oréal Ukraine.

“The key value of social media listening (SML) for us is the opportunity to collect people’s opinions that are as ‘natural’ as possible. When someone leaves a review online, they are in a comfortable environment, they use their ‘own’ language to express themselves, there is no interviewer standing next to them and potentially causing shame for their answer. The analytics of ‘natural’ and honest opinions of our customers enables us to implement the results in our communication and use the same language as them,” Tarandiuk said.

The team worked with a social media listening tool vendor to identify the most popular, in-demand ingredients discussed online and detect the most commonly used words and phrases to create a “consumer glossary.”

Questionnaires had to confirm all the hypotheses and insights found while monitoring social media. This part was performed in-house with the dedicated team. They created custom questionnaires aiming to narrow down all the data to a maximum of three variants that could become the base for the whole product line.

“One of our recent studies had a goal to find out which words our clients used to describe positive and negative qualities of [the] foundation. Due to a change in [the] product’s formula, we also decided to change its communication. Based on the opinions of our customers, we can consolidate the existing positive ideas that our clients have about the product,” Tarandiuk said.

To find the related mentions, the team monitored not only the products made by L'Oréal but also the overall category. “The search query contained both brand names and general words like foundation, texture, smell, skin, pores, etc. The problem was that this approach ended up collecting thousands of mentions, not all of which were relevant to the topic,” said Elena Teselko, content marketing manager, YouScan (L'Oréal’s social media listening tool).

So the team used artificial intelligence-based tagging that divided mentions according to the category, features, or product type.

This approach helped the team discover that customers valued such foundation features as not clogging pores, a light texture, and not spreading. Meanwhile, the most discussed and appreciated cosmetics component was hyaluronic acid.

These exact phrases, found with the help of social media monitoring, were later used for marketing communication.

Creative Sample #7: Marketing communicating for personal care company with messaging based on discoveries from market research

“Doing research and detecting audience’s interests BEFORE starting a campaign is an approach that dramatically lowers any risks and increases chances that the campaign would be appreciated by customers,” Teselko said.

This example was originally published in B2C Branding: 3 quick case studies of enhancing the brand with a better customer experience .

Example #11: Levi’s ethnographic research

In a focus group or survey, you are asking customers to explain something they may not even truly understand. Could be why they bought a product. Or what they think of your competitor.

Ethnographic research is a type of anthropology in which you go into customers’ homes or places of business and observe their actual behavior, behavior they may not understand well enough to explain to you.

While cost prohibitive to many brands, and simply unfeasible for others, it can elicit new insights into your customers.

Michael Perman, Senior Director Cultural Insights, Levi Strauss & Co. uses both quantitative and qualitative research on a broad spectrum, but when it comes to gathering consumer insight, he focuses on in-depth ethnographic research provided by partners who specialize in getting deep into the “nooks and crannies of consumer life in America and around the world.” For example, his team spends time in consumers’ homes and in their closets. They shop with consumers, looking for the reality of a consumer’s life and identifying themes that will enable designers and merchandisers to better understand and anticipate consumer needs.

Perman then puts together multi-sensory presentations that illustrate the findings of research. For example, “we might recreate a teenager’s bedroom and show what a teenage girl might have on her dresser.”

This example was originally published in How to Get Your Company to Pay Attention to Market Research Results: Tips from Levi Strauss .

Example #12: eBags’ ethnographic research

Ethnographic research isn’t confined to a physical goods brand like Levi’s. Digital brands can engage in this form of anthropology as well.

While usability testing in a lab is useful, it does miss some of the real-world environmental factors that play a part in the success of a website. Usability testing alone didn’t create a clear enough picture for Gregory Casey, User Experience Designer and Architect, eBags.

“After we had designed our mobile and tablet experience, I wanted to run some contextual user research, which basically meant seeing how people used it in the wild, seeing how people are using it in their homes. So that’s exactly what I did,” Gregory said.

He found consumers willing to open their home to him and be tested in their normal environment. This meant factors like the television, phone calls and other family members played a part in how they experienced the eBags mobile site.

“During these interview sessions, a lot of times we were interrupted by, say, a child coming over and the mother having to do something for the kid … The experience isn’t sovereign. It’s not something where they just sit down, work through a particular user flow and complete their interaction,” Gregory said.

By watching users work through the site as they would in their everyday life, Gregory got to see what parts of the site they actually use.

This example was originally published in Mobile Marketing: 4 takeaways on how to improve your mobile shopping experience beyond just responsive design .

Example #13: John Deere’s shift from product-centric market research to consumer-centric research

One of the major benefits of market research is to overcome company blind spots. However, if you start with your blind spots – i.e., a product focus – you will blunt the effectiveness of your market research.

In the past, “they’d say, Here’s the product, find out how people feel about it,” explained David van Nostrand, Manager, John Deere's Global Market Research. “A lot of companies do that.” Instead, they should be saying, “Let's start with the customers: what do they want, what do they need?”

The solution? A new in-house program called “Category Experts” brings the product-group employees over as full team members working on specific research projects with van Nostrand’s team.

These staffers handle items that don’t require a research background: scheduling, meetings, logistics, communication and vendor management. The actual task they handle is less important than the fact that they serve as human cross-pollinators, bringing consumer-centric sensibility back to their product- focused groups.

For example, if van Nostrand’s team is doing research about a vehicle, they bring in staffers from the Vehicles product groups. “The information about vehicle consumers needs to be out there in the vehicle marketing groups, not locked in here in the heads of the researchers.”

This example was originally published in How John Deere Increased Mass Consumer Market Share by Revamping its Market Research Tactics .

Example #14: LeapFrog’s market research involvement throughout product development (not just at the beginning and the end)

Market research is sometimes thought of as a practice that can either inform the development of a product, or research consumer attitudes about developed products. But what about the middle?

Once the creative people begin working on product designs, the LeapFrog research department stays involved.

They have a lab onsite where they bring moms and kids from the San Francisco Bay area to test preliminary versions of the products. “We do a lot of hands-on, informal qualitative work with kids,” said Craig Spitzer, VP Marketing Research, LeapFrog. “Can they do what they need to do to work the product? Do they go from step A to B to C, or do they go from A to C to B?”

When designing the LeapPad Learning System, for example, the prototype went through the lab “a dozen times or so,” he says.

A key challenge for the research department is keeping and building the list of thousands of families who have agreed to be on call for testing. “We've done everything from recruiting on the Internet to putting out fliers in local schools, working through employees whose kids are in schools, and milking every connection we have,” Spitzer says.

Kids who test products at the lab are compensated with a free, existing product rather than a promise of the getting the product they're testing when it is released in the future.

This example was originally published in How LeapFrog Uses Marketing Research to Launch New Products .

Related resources

The Marketer’s Blind Spot: 3 ways to overcome the marketer’s greatest obstacle to effective messaging

Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want

Online Marketing Tests: How do you know you’re really learning anything?

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• 7 Marketing Report Examples

7 Marketing Report Examples & Templates

You know that  marketing reporting  is essential to your marketing efforts: it tells you whether your marketing campaigns are performing well or your marketing strategy needs refinement. But you also don't want to spend all your time analyzing your marketing channels' performance. 

That's where a good reporting tool with clear and automated marketing reports comes in.

See this report example with your own data

Here's everything you need to know about marketing reports, including how to create one and seven types of marketing report examples . 

• What is a marketing report?
• Why do you need a marketing report?
• How often should you create a marketing report?

How to present your clients' marketing data

• What marketing report templates should you use?
• 1. General marketing report example
• 2. SEO marketing report example
• 3. PPC marketing report example
• 4. Social media marketing report example

5. Display advertising campaign marketing report example

• 6. Ecommerce marketing report example
• 7. Email marketing report example

What is a   marketing report?

A marketing report is a comprehensive analysis presented in real time through data visualization . It details the performance of various marketing channels to inform and help the marketing team, clients, and stakeholders make data-driven decisions.

Importantly, it lets you quickly and easily monitor your marketing performance across all your marketing channels and tells you where your digital marketing efforts are a success and where they might need to be optimized. 

Why do you need a   marketing report?

As a marketer, you want easy access to data on your key marketing metrics. A digital marketing report gives you all your marketing data, constantly tracked. You can use a Google Analytics report , a social media report , or all of these simultaneously. 

You can include  KPIs  (key performance indicators) and data sets from all the top marketing channels, from Google Analytics to social media, email marketing to paid search, and more! There are many key metrics, and selecting the right ones can be tricky.

Luckily, automated marketing performance reports come with preset KPIs to get you started, and if you decide to track different metrics, you can do that: they're fully customizable .

How often should you create a   marketing report?

We usually recommend creating reports on a monthly basis. While creating daily or weekly marketing reports can be helpful for you, the marketer and your clients may get overwhelmed by the sheer number of reports and start ignoring them—not what you want. 

Monthly marketing reports allow you to gather enough data to see how changes have affected marketing results while ensuring that underperforming campaigns don't run too long. The best part is that whether you create a daily, weekly, or monthly report with a reporting tool such as Dashthis , you only have to create your report once, and your data will automatically be updated daily.

Giving your clients a clear and concise marketing dashboard is essential: it keeps them informed about the marketing efforts undertaken and, importantly, tells them whether they're getting a good return on investment on their marketing budget. 

Here are some tips for creating a good marketing report:

• Use visuals   - charts and graphs are much better than a written paragraph of statistics. 
• Include results upfront   - this is ultimately what clients are interested in and this should be page one of your report. Also include notes and explanations for why things happened the way they did so that your clients have a full understanding of the   marketing campaigns' performance.
• Don't bury bad results   - instead, include them upfront, explain what happened and what you're going to do about it. Clients will appreciate the honesty.
• Keep it concise   - if you have a lot of material to cover that's fine but try to keep it short and snappy
• Use section headers   - this makes it clear what you're talking about and makes your report easier to follow
• Incorporating multiple data sources helps you understand what's working and what's not. This allows you to make better, more informed decisions that match your business goals.

What   marketing report templates   should you use?

Our monthly marketing report templates are designed to save you time regarding marketing reporting. They're preloaded with the most relevant KPIs and fully customizable so you can change them according to your or your client's requirements. 

Here are 7 of our most popular   marketing report templates:

1. General marketing   report example

This tremendous template will give you an overview of all your marketing activities. From content marketing to e-commerce analytics to search engine optimization, your marketing or sales team will have the critical data at their fingertips.

Remember that this report is an overview; if you want to examine the stats, check out the other templates below.

Some KPIs we recommend including are:

• Bounce rate
• Campaign performance
• Channel performance by traffic source (website traffic, organic traffic, paid traffic, referral traffic)
• Conversion rate
• Goal completions

Use this report with your own data !

2. SEO   marketing   report example

SEO is a key part of any long-term digital marketing strategy. You probably already use Google Analytics dashboards , but this report will help keep you and your clients informed about how your SEO efforts are performing.  

Key KPIs you should think about including in your  SEO report  include:

• Organic sessions
• Organic conversions
• Organic landing pages
• Keyword rankings

3. PPC   marketing   report example

The good thing about PPC is that the return on investment is easy to track. It's also a good strategy for driving conversions - but only if results are monitored and optimized.

Our PPC report supports Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, SEMRush, and more!

A good  PPC marketing report  will include stats on:

• Number of leads
• Clicks and costs
• Conversions
• Ad performance

We also recommend organizing your data by channel to get a breakdown of how each one is performing.

4. Social media marketing   report example

There are two aspects to  social media marketing : paid (like Facebook Ads) and organic (content marketing, for example). The most popular social media channels you're probably using for campaigns are Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and you'll want to include all the ones you're currently using in your report. 

Key KPIs that should be in your report are:

• Demographics of the target audience
• Likes and followers
• Impressions and reach
• Engagement rate
• Top performing posts

As with PPC marketing, the data in the report should be organized by social media platform for a clearer overview.

Bring all your advertising campaigns into one marketing report for a complete view of their performance with our  display advertising campaign marketing report .

Whether using Facebook Ads or Google AdWords, this report should include all your display ad channels. 

Your data should be organized by campaign and you should track the following KPIs for each campaign:

• Cost and cost per click
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Impressions

6. Ecommerce   marketing   report example

As your products and services evolve and change, so should your e-commerce marketing strategy. Our e-commerce marketing report includes all the main KPIs you'll want to track to ensure you get the best possible results from your e-commerce marketing efforts. 

Ecommerce marketing involves several marketing channels, from Google Analytics to social media, so there's no shortage of important metrics to track.

• Transactions
• Pages per session
• Average order value

7. Email marketing   report example

Email marketing is a great way to get your products and services in front of people—they go straight into their inboxes. But you can't just fire out emails and hope for the best.

You've got to track how the campaigns are performing and how changes in content ultimately affect your bottom line.

That's where our  email marketing report  comes in.

KPIs   your report should include are:

• Number of emails sent
• Unique open rate
• Overall campaign performance

Fundamentally, you want to track how many people opened your email and converted.

Use this report with your own data

Marketing reports   built for marketers

DashThis has a bunch of other report templates that cover pretty well every aspect of digital marketing. All of them make reporting on marketing campaigns quicker and easier: DashThis fetches the data automatically, so you don't have to manually enter data into Word or Excel to generate different types of reports for your clients.

It's also full of functionalities and intuitive; reports can be created by dragging and dropping the widgets you want to display. Once you're happy with the report, it can be automatically delivered to whoever needs to see it. 

Marketing analytics made easy! How fun is that? 

Ready to save some time? Try out DashThis free for 15 days.

DashThis is the power behind thousands of reporting dashboards created by and delivered for agencies and digital marketers every month. 

Try our report templates with your own data today!

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6 Free Market Research Templates to Help Win Your Market

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Market research templates save time and give clarity about what should and shouldn’t be included in any type of market research .

These days, doing regular market research is key. Particularly given how quickly consumer behaviors shift and companies change tactics to keep up with the ever-growing number of competitors in their industry.

In this post, I’m sharing six market research report templates to give you a head start and help steer your analysis in the right direction from the onset.

What is a market research template?

Market research templates provide questions and specific fields to fill out – relevant to specified market research objectives. You can add or remove fields according to what’s relevant to your market and research goal. It provides a framework to develop your own research methodology if you don’t want to go full-scale with a research firm.

What are the advantages of using market research templates?

There are many ways market research templates benefit organizations of any size.

• It costs less than hiring an external market research firm.
• Completion is often quicker because pre-set fields guide your research.
• Little to no professional training is required to complete a template.
• Templates can be easily shared with other business units.
• Files can be easily updated internally in the future.
• Research Intelligence tools like Similarweb make it much easier to access market research data than ever before.
• Using a template enables you to stay focused and organized.

Doing market research with a template can help you generate results faster than any agency can deliver. You set your priorities and start collecting information without untimely back-and-forth correspondence. This is particularly valuable for online companies in markets that develop and change quickly. You need real-time data to improve your results, so time is always of the essence.

In addition to time, you also save costs. Comprehensive market research usually demands additional financial resources. By using shareable templates, you can involve relevant internal business units at minimal extra cost.

This presents another advantage: You own your information. You can come back to the files, reuse, update, and compare whenever it’s relevant. This is particularly useful in the dynamic world of online business because you’ll want to research the market repeatedly to detect and adapt to changes.

What are market research templates used for?

Most types of market research templates provide a robust framework that steers market research efforts in the right direction. When we consider the “journeys” a market research report template can help with – most use cases aren’t merely one-time research projects but should include periodic monitoring and analysis.

• Assess your brand’s strength and influential power. Evaluate your market share , and measure which percentage of the market you reach and sell to.
• Launch a new product or enter a new market . Get to know the territory and the key players to avoid unnecessary risks and recognize new opportunities.
• Identify and keep tabs on your top competitors. Be aware of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses to align your strategic planning.
• Understand your target audience. If you truly want people to resonate with your product or service, you need to take the time to get to know them, their interests, pain points, likes, and dislikes.
• Innovate your business model. Before applying changes to products or business strategies, understand user demand and need shifts.
• Drive more sales. Optimize product placement by identifying your product’s uniqueness and the specific value to boost your marketing campaigns.
• Fine-tune your digital advertising and analytics. Find and optimize the marketing channels and keywords with the highest potential and lowest competition .
• Find and follow emerging trends. Detect changes in the market development early and use them to your advantage.

Five things to do before using a market research analysis template

As you’ll soon discover, there are lots of tools and resources at your disposal – and you won’t need all of them to reach your goal. Your choices should depend on the goal of your research, something you’ll need to clarify before you start to use any type of market research report template.

Take a little time to do the following pre-planning steps 1-3 before you use any template in your research.

• Define the reason for your research and its goals.
• Identify the most suitable research types and methods.
• Prepare the materials you need to conduct the research, i.e., templates, tools, and market research questions ; then delegate responsibilities if applicable.
• Identify your market’s characteristics.
• Define your target audience and segments.
• Consider both qualitative and quantitative data points.
• Decide whether to use primary research, secondary research , or a mixture of both.
• Google Analytics vs. Similarweb
• Free online sources and tools
• Advanced competitor analysis
• Summarize your findings in a template and start to analyze.

Get a step-by-step roadmap for easy and comprehensive market research in our guide – Market Research: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How To Get It Right .

Types of market research templates

In this next section, I’m sharing the most important types of market research templates you need to fulfil your research goals. I’ll cover what each is and how a template can help with the research. In the final section of this post, I’ll share the quickest way to find the data you need to complete your template.

SWOT analysis template

Many of you will have heard of or used a SWOT analysis framework before. It’s a tried and trusted tool that helps organizations and individuals uncover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of their business and the competition. A template gives you pre-set fields to consider and complete, helping you know the essential metrics. Once complete, it shows a range of factors relevant to your business and market that can help you adapt for growth.

Use this type of market research analysis template to review your business, along with each of your competitors – analysis of the top four rivals is enough, but you might want to extend this up to eight. This market analysis template provides key questions to answer in each section to help guide your responses.

Market sizing template

Using a market analysis template shows you exactly how to do market sizing correctly. What’s more, it can ensure others within your organization are clear about how the figures have been calculated and provide a consistent and transparent framework for repeating the process in the future.

Use this simple market research template to get the formulas for the total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM).

Competitive analysis framework template

Pick between 2-4 direct and indirect competitors , then compile the same data and information about each. Start with company research, then customer research, and add information about products and marketing strategies to build the ultimate competitive framework. Collecting the same data points gives you a straightforward comparison and clear picture of the competitive landscape .

This market analysis template covers both B2C and B2B markets. It gives you a detailed framework that helps you map company, customer, product, go-to-market, and marketing channels for your business, and that of your rivals.

Further reading: this post covers seven different types of Competitive Analysis Frameworks that can be used for this form of market research.

Use this market research template for a business plan or as a base document to do regular checks on the state of the competitive landscape.

Trend analysis template

Completing regular market trend analysis is vital – particularly given how fast consumer behavior and markets change. Sure, you can set up news alerts and keep an ear close to the ground, but this is not necessarily the most effective way to future-proof a business and stay ahead of the curve. Rather, it’s a slow and unreliable way to access the intel you need, not just to survive but to flourish.

Early detection of fluctuations, shifts, and changes is key; and a trend analysis template, when done periodically, can help you quickly identify and prepare your business to react.

This market trend analysis template is designed specifically for those operating in the B2B space. It clearly guides you through industry research, historical competitive data, desktop vs. mobile trends , and seasonal keyword research ; each of which can help you discover market-specific trends effectively.

Further reading: Trendspotting: Why All the Market Leaders Are Doing It

Buyer persona template

Define the customer who would benefit most from your product or service. Based on what you’ve learned about consumers and your target market , characterize your ideal customer. Who are they, what are their pain points, and how can you help them?

This template shows you exactly what kind of data to include when you build a new buyer person. We’ve completed an example for you as a guide; but also given you empty slides you can fill-in yourself for your own business and market.

Further reading: How to Create Buyer Personas That Boost Conversions

Audience analysis template

An Audience analysis looks at a group of people in much the same way you examine your current customers. It can help you discover how to turn more of your audience into paying customers by segmenting visitor and behavioral characteristics.

This market analysis template will guide you through the different types of data you should collect from both your own and your rival’s channels. It takes into account various characteristics of company, product, purchase, consumers, interests, and more to help you form a clear and comprehensive view of your target audience.

It’s split into three tabs, each covering B2B, transactional, and informative businesses separately.

Further reading: If this is your first time doing audience analysis, read this guide to understand what a target audience is and how to analyze it .

Get started with all the free market research templates you need to succeed!

How to use Similarweb to help with market research templates

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can help you complete almost any market research project quickly and effectively. One of the most-cited reasons people choose tools like Similarweb is due to the accuracy and timeliness of data. Unlike other forms of market research, like secondary research; Similarweb’s information is always the most up-to-date there is.

• Benchmarking tool : Accelerate your new digital strategy and learn how you stack up against the competition and market leaders.
• Market research tool : Analyze market trends in near-real time so that you can take action when it matters most, not a quarter later.
• Company research : Take a closer look at any company’s digital performance and expose your competitor’s digital strategies.
• Audience analysis tool : Engage more deeply with your audience, explore new audience segments and expand your reach.
• Customer journey analytics : Understand your customers and explore bottom-of-the-funnel metrics to discover what makes them convert.
• Mobile app intelligence : See the impact of mobile apps in your market: spot trends and emerging players.

Wrapping up…..

Good market research shouldn’t have to take an age; but as a task that requires careful planning, meticulous attention, and focus – even with the best tools, you’ve got to know the right questions to ask, and the best places to uncover the best intel.

Using market research templates will save significant time in the market research process while providing a clear and comprehensive set of guidelines that can be easily replicated or revisited in the future.

Market analysis templates allow for consistency and provide a clear framework that allows the inexperienced market researcher to do the task with ease.

Use these templates to jumpstart your research efforts and make strategic decisions more effectively, and in a more informed way.

Boost Your Market Research with Similarweb

Enjoy 360° visibility into your industry and instantly adapt to market changes

What is the importance of market research?

Market research is important because you can’t succeed if you’re not aware of market conditions, potential obstacles, purported budget, and how to market your products effectively.

How do you write a market research document?

The simplest way to write a market research document is to obtain a free market research template to guide your content. It can prompt you with the right questions to ask, and shape research efforts and outcomes effectively.

Which type of market research should I use?

To employ a highly effective market research strategy, you should combine the two methods. We advise you to use secondary research as a preparation for your primary research.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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Marketing Reports 101: How to Create One + Templates

Written by: Unenabasi Ekeruke

You certainly can't rely on guesswork or gut feeling to answer these questions or make informed decisions. This is where marketing reports come into play.

Marketing reports provide the data you need to monitor activities, assess performance and make smarter decisions that bring better results. According to Think with Google , marketers who leverage tools to analyze, measure and report their marketing programs are 39% more likely to perform better.

If you are sold on creating high-quality marketing reports that captivate your audience, we've got you covered.

In this article, we'll teach you everything you need to know about marketing reports, how to create them and marketing report templates you can use straight away.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing report, the benefits of marketing reporting.

• How to Create a Marketing Report

Marketing Report Best Practices

Marketing report templates, level up your marketing reports with visme.

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A marketing report is a collection of data from different sources to evaluate the progress and performance of your marketing efforts and inform future marketing decisions. Businesses of all sizes create marketing reports to glean valuable into their:

• Overall marketing strategy
• Marketing goals
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Marketing activities like research, promotions, content, ads, email, social media and more
• Expected outcomes and actual results

Not all marketing reports are created equal. The scope of your marketing reports can vary depending on the data you want to track and the number of marketing channels. The common types of marketing reports include:

• General marketing reports
• Social media marketing reports
• SEO marketing reports
• PPC marketing reports
• Email marketing reports

When used effectively, marketing reporting puts you on top of your marketing activities and metrics across all marketing channels. At a glance, you'll get a bird's eye view of which marketing campaigns and channels are delivering the best results.

You're probably wondering why you should create reports, especially when key stakeholders aren't compelling you to present them. Or why add another challenging task to your itinerary when you've got customers and other business activities to attend to.

Here are the major perks of creating a detailed marketing report.

Visualize Customer Purchase Journey

There's no better way to understand the customer journey than by using a marketing report. From your marketing report, you can quickly identify:

• Critical touch points
• Lead magnets or contents that are driving the most impact
• Where your prospects are on their journey
• Prospects who are willing to spend and when they plan to make a purchase
• What steps you should take to speed up the sales process and much more
• How to optimize your sales and marketing funnel to convert better

Measure and Analyze Marketing Efforts

After investing a significant amount of time and money in marketing, how do you know if your efforts are worthwhile? This is precisely where marketing reports come in.

Whether you're looking to generate leads, turn prospects into customers or increase revenue, your marketing reports will show you whether or not your campaigns are achieving the desired results. You'll quickly figure out which strategies will help you maximize return on investment and get more bang for your marketing buck.

Every marketer and data analyst understands that the struggle with reporting is real. But Visme makes writing a report super-easy regardless of your skill level. It doesn't matter what type of data you want to capture. Visme has thousands of compelling report templates , stock images, visual aids and design elements to make your reports pack a punch.

Make Informed Business Decisions

In today's hyper-competitive business environment, you can't rely on wild guesses and gut feelings to make important marketing decisions. If you want to call the right shots or get your decisions spot on, you need rich and quality data.

We're not just talking about gathering a bunch of isolated numbers for the sake of it. Relevant and actionable data shows how your marketing campaigns have fared and impacted your bottom line.

Moreover, be sure this data is digestible and deeply connected to your business outcomes. A detailed marketing report like the one below gives you all of your granular and enriching marketing data in one place.

Keeps Everyone on the Same Page

Misalignments between sales and marketing teams are a struggle for most businesses. It stifles business growth and costs companies more than $1 trillion yearly .

For this alignment to happen, data needs to flow across departments. And marketing reports are often the missing piece of the puzzle. They provide the data that sales and marketing teams need to:

• Optimize marketing content to increase emotional appeal and close more sales
• Achieve their sales and marketing goals
• Nurture leads through each stage of the sales funnel
• Increase conversions and drive revenue over the top

How To Create a Marketing Report

Now you know why you need a marketing report. The next big question is how do you create a comprehensive and useful marketing report?

We'll go over how to create marketing reports to help you make better decisions and benefit your audience.

1. Outline the Purpose of Your Marketing Report

Without a clear-cut purpose, your marketing report is just a bunch of isolated numbers without meaning. Before gathering data and creating a report, ask yourself these questions.

• What is the purpose of this report?
• What message do we want to share and how do we convey it?
• What are we looking to learn from this report?

Are you looking to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns? Do you want to justify marketing expenses or study marketing trends over a period of time?

Let's face it; you can't possibly fit every single piece of data into your marketing report. Answering these questions will help you focus on data that shape your marketing strategy, inform your decisions and help you perform better.

2. Know Your Audience

With a ton of marketing activities going on, you probably have a heap of data that's getting bigger by the hour.

All of this information may be relevant to you. But you want to ask yourself, is it relevant to the management team or people in other departments?

For example, the VP of marketing may be interested in which marketing campaigns bring in more leads, conversions and positive ROI. In contrast, the chief financial officer will want to see how marketing expense translates to sales and impacts the bottom line.

Before writing your marketing report, find out your target audience and what they want to know. This viewpoint will help you decide what data to provide. Plus, your marketing report must reflect the needs of your target audience.

Be sure to make your reports contain valuable information that's easy to understand. Your audience should be able to view the report and have clear direction on the next steps rather than scratching their heads in confusion.

3. Gather Your Data

Once you're clear on your target audience, the next important step is to gather, filter and analyze your data.

As your business grows, keeping tabs on granular data and tracking performance can be daunting. It's always helpful to keep an updated document of relevant documents and spreadsheets showing key metrics.

Using analytics tools like Google Analytics , Mixpanel , Hotjar , SEMRush and more to capture key marketing data can make your job a lot easier. You can also use change data capture (CDC) to track changes in your data warehouse, which will help you see the impact that new features have on the way people interact with your website.

Depending on your reporting process, you can do a daily, monthly or weekly dump and then use the data to build your report.

While gathering your data, you may be tempted to report everything, which isn't a good idea. Remember, your audience is typically only interested in the most critical metrics. Please resist the urge to drown them in a sea of meaningful information and lengthy reports.

Start by defining the period you want to focus on. Is it a weekly , monthly , quarterly or annual report ?

If you want a clear picture of your marketing performance over a period, it's better to draw comparisons between two different periods—current vs. previous. Also, be sure the metrics align with the goals you shared earlier.

4. Write Your Report

You've got reliable data to build your sales report at this stage. Now it's time to craft your report in a digestible, understandable and actionable format.

First, you want to choose a report writing format that captures the critical information and keeps your audience engaged. The next step is to identify what you should include in your report.

Let's look at your marketing report structure and what you should include in your report.

Marketing Report Structure

Marketing report structures aren't one size fits all. They may vary based on the purpose and content of your report, but the most common sections include the following:

Title or Cover Page

This page should be concise and clearly state what your report is analyzing. The cover page should include:

• Report title
• Reporting period and the date it was written

Executive Summary

This section usually comes last. It should summarize the key points of the entire report, highlight successes and failures and discuss future plans.

Introduction

In this section, you want to talk about what your report is about, who it's addressed to, what they'll find it and why they should care.

The body is usually the longest section of your report. Here you'll plug in all the marketing data you collected earlier. Again, make sure to use bullet points and visualizations to enhance readability and visual appeal.

Summarize your marketing report with key takeaways and a clear call to action. Remember to make recommendations and highlight the next steps.

What To Include in Your Report

A well-written marketing report should detail key areas and the performance of your marketing activities. While the level of details may vary based on your strategy or how complex your operations are, you should aim to capture the following critical information.

Overview of your marketing strategy

Here you should discuss your marketing goals, target audience and what channels you're using to reach your prospects. It should also highlight the specific action you're taking to execute your strategy.

Campaigns/Areas of Focus

This section should take a deep dive into your recent marketing efforts, including:

• Projects or campaigns you've run
• Pending, completed and upcoming task

You should aim to capture your win, losses, lessons learned and plans for the next phase.

Metrics and Analytics

This section should capture critical figures that show progress, performance and marketing effectiveness. It should reflect how well your campaigns are edging towards your set goals and key performance indicators.

5. Visualize Your Data

Data-heavy reports can be exhausting, especially when you're slamming your audience with large walls of text and numbers. To keep your audience engaged, visualize your marketing reports with eye-catching charts , graphs , infographics , images, videos and other visual aids .

Using visual aids will make it easier for your audience to digest your report and retain important information. You can create data visualizations such as graphs, charts and maps with the help of Visme's graph maker .

Watch the video below to learn how to create beautiful charts and graphs that make your marketing report effective.

Read this article to learn more about creating charts and other visual aids. Watch the video below to discover how to use data visualization for reporting and business intelligence.

6. Pay Attention to Design

Your marketing report design doesn't have to be dull and uninteresting. Instead, use these design tips to make your report engaging and attractive.

• Enrich and add personality to your marketing reports with images, videos and GIFs
• Use a consistent color scheme and color contrast for your report
• Customize your report using brand elements like colors, logos, fonts and layout
• Make your marketing report more engaging by incorporating animation and interactivity
• To make your report cleaner and easier to read, use headers or page transitions to divide it into sections
• Add notes, callouts and comments to bring context to critical metrics and KPIs

Fortunately, you don't need to be a professional graphic designer to create stunning and interactive marketing report designs that impress your audience. All you need is intuitive software like Visme packed with tons of design tools and templates that make your report shine.

7. Leverage Ready-to-Use Marketing Report Templates

Whether you're a novice or seasoned marketer, report templates are a great starting point. These preset templates help you choose the right data and show you where and how to place them.

Beyond saving you time and effort, they ensure your content and design elements are consistent. In the end, you're sure to have a beautiful and organized marketing report.

Visme offers thousands of fully customizable and user-friendly marketing report templates, layouts and features to suit your specific needs. All you need to do is pick a professionally-designed template and customize it to your taste. And boom, your marketing report is ready to go.

Even if you have little or no design experience, you can fast-track your next marketing report with our stunning, easy-to-use template below.

Writing a useful report requires planning, thoughtful consideration and follow-up. Let's go over some best practices to keep in mind when reporting on your marketing and sales efforts.

1. Schedule Your Reports

If you want to get timely reports for decision-making and ensure that teams are aligned, you need to schedule your reports to run periodically.

One way to ensure you're getting reports at the right time is to set a reminder to compile a report or set it to run automatically. Scheduling your report ahead of time leaves you with enough time to clean your data and reduces the risk of human error.

2. Put Your Most Valuable Data First

Whether you're creating reports to share with your team or top management, you certainly want your audience to read till the end.

Nobody wants to read an entire report only to get the key points on the last page. Make sure to place the most useful information early on. Right off the bat, your content should:

• Educate your audience,
• Highlight compelling figures and interesting insights
• Draw readers' attention to urgent and critical issues
• Provide information for decision-making

Use bullet points, callout quotes and sidebars to effectively grab the reader's attention while breaking up unappealing blocks of text. If you need to capture numbers, you can embed sheets into your documents .

3. Tell a Story

Lumping your reports with endless numbers and charts without context gives limited insight into what your report is all about. Instead, you want to walk your audience through the story behind the report, giving them the information and context they need at every level. This might also call for some interactive marketing techniques as well.

In a nutshell, your story should add more meaning to your data or answer critical questions like:

• What's responsible for the metrics, patterns or trends in your marketing data?
• What marketing tactics are you implementing that would cause the numbers to skyrocket or decline?

While telling your story, keep it succinct and add personality to make it enjoyable to read. Watch the video below to get more tips on telling compelling stories with data.

4. Gather Feedback From Your Audience

After you've presented your marketing reports and engaged your audience, remember to ask for feedback. You can ask for feedback via email or provide a short survey form for them to fill out.

Getting feedback from those using your marketing reports will help you determine whether it's useful or captures everything they need to know and what you can do to improve your marketing report in the future.

Are you ready to create attractive marketing reports that add value to your business? Look no further; you've hit the jackpot.

Here's a selection of professionally designed templates crafted to provide value and actionable insight into your marketing performance.

Template #1: Weekly Marketing Report

If you want to capture your marketing team's performance every week, this template is set up to make your work easier.

This template features a rich blend of bright colors with strong visual contrast. It also uses design elements that draw attention to KPIs and metrics like web analytics, campaigns and social media engagement.

Template #2: Monthly Marketing Report

A monthly marketing report template like this one is a perfect way to show your audience what your marketing team has been up to in the past month.

The template has a simplistic cover design and layout that accommodates key marketing performance highlights, metrics, line graphs and timelines that make your report shine.

You can add compelling images, videos and animations to make your report engaging and interactive. Customize this template with your logo, color and fonts to match your brand identity.

Template #3: Social Media Marketing Report

Assigning tasks to teams and tracking the progress of each task can be daunting, especially when you're dealing with multiple social media channels. But a single-paged report template like this example simplifies the process for your marketing team and brings everyone on the same page.

It has a rich blue and white color combination and a clean, spaced-out design. At a glance, you can capture a wealth of data, instant feedback and comments.

Simply plug in your marketing data, change the font, typography and color to match your brand and you're ready to go.

Template #4: Content Marketing Report

Do you want to share your content marketing plans and see if your efforts are paying off? Then, using this simple, clear and concise weekly report template is your best bet.

You can share your content ideas, competitor analysis and keyword search results. Then, fill in the placeholders with your data and descriptive content and make your data more visually appealing by using color-coded vector icons , shapes, charts and more.

Template #5: Quarterly Email Analytics Report

Keeping track of quarterly email analytics lets you know how your subscribers engage with your emails. With a template like this one, you can track metrics that directly link to your business goals and put your email marketing strategy and performance into perspective.

Visme gives you the creative freedom to make this template your own. Unleash your creativity and level up your email analytics report by incorporating Visme's graphic vector icons and shapes.

Explore our extensive collection of colorful, isometric, flat and outline graphics to find your perfect match and make your report stand out.

Template #6: Promotional Sales Report

This template is a perfect fit for sharing insights into your promotion campaign efforts, results and expected outcomes.

The cover page features a stunning image of the store and a powerful theme that leaves an impression on your readers.

This template moves further away from traditional neutral and corporate blue. However, the bright and bold yellow color scheme is catchy enough to draw readers into the content and show your brand's personality. The report template has four key sections and uses more text and numbers to get the message across.

Template #7: Social Media Analytics Report

This multi-page template has a sophisticated design, modern layout and dynamic elements that grab the audience's attention. It's designed to provide a high-level overview of your overall social media performance.

The template breaks down your report into four sections and beams more light on metrics such as social media reach, interaction and customer gain across multiple social media platforms.

Feel free to tweak colors, gradients, fonts to reflect your brand identity. You can also use charts, images, illustrations, characters, gestures and visualizations to bring your report to life.

Template #8: Promotional Campaign Report

This promotional campaign report template is perfect for businesses of all sizes. You can use it to share updates, progress and results of advertisements and other marketing activities.

The template has an appealing design layout and artistic theme with stylized content blocks, colorful borders, background photos and vector icons, all sourced from Visme's rich design and asset library. The colorful line graph makes the financial data compelling and memorable.

Feel free to cut, copy, paste and adjust anything you like until it fits your unique needs.

Template #9: Retail Weekly Promotional Campaign Report

If you want to ignite new interest in your company's ongoing promotional campaign, this stylish and attractive report template fits the bill.

The template uses a mix of stunning visualizations, color schemes and a uniquely crafted layout to make your information stand out. You can easily customize the template, present information in a compelling way and create an engaging experience for your audience.

Template #10: Annual Marketing Report Template

What overarching theme would you use to highlight marketing performance in the past year? Our final pick is an annual marketing report template that's sure to leave an impression on your audience.

The template caters to any business regardless of size, niche and scope. Likewise, it covers everything key stakeholders need to know, including your marketing efforts, strategy, achievements and plans for the coming years. Make your report stand out with a variety of stylish fonts, high-quality images and stock photos and visual aids from Visme.

This trendy and modern template features a rich combination of two vibrant color schemes: purple and blue. Each of the following pages features colors from the original palette to maintain a consistent appearance.

Marketing reports indicate where your marketing efforts are successful and need to be optimized to yield better results. However, marketing data is enormous and marketing reporting is an ongoing business process. That's why you need a tool like Visme's report maker that makes it super easy for you to create and share marketing reports in seconds.

Visme provides an incredible array of templates, high-quality images, design and data visualization tools to make your report impactful. With the dynamic field feature , you can ensure your reports are always accurate.

Once done, you can share your marketing report online using a link, embed it on your website, or download it for offline use in multiple formats, like PDF and HTML5. You can track how people are engaging with your report from your analytics tab .

Congratulations and happy reporting!

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Market research templates: what they are and how to use them.

18 min read Interested in market research but need some templates to start with? In this guide, we unpack market research, survey planning best practice and share some of our best templates for brand, customer, product and employee research.

What is a market research template?

While you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of market research and how it can help you to reach your target audiences and improve your product or service , the real challenge is designing a market research plan that is conducive to excellent results.

All of this starts with the right market research template(s) to help you analyze specific target audiences, collect the right data and uncover insights that can drive actionable change.

In this article, we’re going to:

• talk about market research and its use cases,
• provide you with a standard template that allows you to plan your research,
• and share several other templates to help you with specific types of market research

But first, let’s revisit market research.

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What is market research?

Market research is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through surveys and questionnaires with prospects and/or customers. It involves gathering information about market needs and prospect/customer preferences .

Through market research, you can discover and/or refine your target market, get opinions and feedback on what you provide to them and uncover further prospect/customer pain points and expectations of your service or product .

Market research can be conducted in-house, either by you and your research team, or through a third-party company that specializes in it (they will typically have their own research panels or be capable of creating a research panel to suit your requirements).

The four common types of market research

There are lots of different ways to conduct market research to collect customer data and feedback , test product concepts , and do brand research, but the four most common are:

The most commonly used form of market research, surveys are a form of qualitative research that asks respondents a series of open or closed-ended questions , delivered either as an on-screen questionnaire or email.

Surveys are incredibly popular because they’re cheap, easy to produce, and can capture data very quickly, leading to faster insights.

2) Focus groups

Why not bring together a carefully selected group of people in your target market using focus groups? Though more expensive and complex than surveys and interviews, focus groups can offer deeper insight into prospect and customer behavior – from how users experience your products and services to what marketing messages really resonate with them.

Of course, as a market research method that’s reliant on a moderator to steer conversation, it can be subject to bias (as different moderators might have preferred questions or be more forceful) and if you cut corners (not asking all the necessary questions or making assumptions based on responses), the data could get skewed.

3) Observation

As if you were a fly-on-the-wall, the observation market research method can be incredibly powerful. Rather than interviewing or surveying users, you simply take notes while someone from your target market/target audience engages with your product . How are they using it? What are they struggling with? Do they look as though they have concerns?

Observing your target audience/target market in this fashion is a great alternative to the other more traditional methods on this list. It’s less expensive and far more natural as it isn’t guided by a moderator or a predefined set of questions. The only issue is that you can’t get feedback directly from the mouth of the user, so it’s worth combining this type of research with interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups.

4) Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (both in-person and virtually), allowing for more natural conversations with participants.

For gleaning deeper insights (especially with non-verbal cues giving greater weight to opinions), there’s nothing better than face-to-face interviews. Any kind of interview will provide excellent information, helping you to better understand your prospects and target audience/target market.

Use cases for market research

When you want to understand your prospects and/or customers, but have no existing data to set a benchmark – or want to improve your products and services quickly – market research is often the go-to.

Market research (as mentioned above), helps you to discover how prospects and customers feel about your products and services, as well as what they would like to see .

But there are more use cases and benefits to market research than the above.

Reduce risk of product and business failure

With any new venture, there’s no guarantee that the new idea will be successful. As such, it’s up to you to establish the market’s appetite for your product or service. The easiest way to do this is through market research – you can understand the challenges prospects face and quickly identify where you can help. With the data from your market survey, you can then create a solution that addresses the needs and expectations of would-be customers.

Forecast future trends

Market research doesn’t just help you to understand the current market – it also helps you to forecast future needs. As you conduct your research and analyze the findings, you can identify trends – for example, how brands and businesses are adopting new technology to improve customer experiences or how sustainability is becoming a core focus for packaging. Whatever it is you’re looking to understand about the future of business in your market, comprehensive market research can help you to identify it.

Stay ahead of the competition

Understanding your market and what prospects and customers want from you will help to keep you ahead of the competition . The fact is that the top businesses frequently invest in market research to get an edge, and those that don’t tap into the insights of their audience are missing low-hanging fruit.

As well as helping you to stay in front, you can also use market research to identify gaps in the market, e.g. your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses . Just have participants answer questions about competitor products/services – or even use the products/services – and work out how you can refine your offerings to address these issues.

Plan more strategically

What’s the foundation of your business strategy? If it’s based on evidence, e.g. what people expect of your products and services, it’ll be much easier to deliver something that works. Rather than making assumptions about what you should do, market research gives you a clear, concrete understanding of what people want to see.

Check out our guide to market research for a more comprehensive breakdown.

How do you write a market research plan/template?

A market research plan is very similar to a brief in that it documents the most vital information and steps about your project. Consider it a blueprint that outlines your main objective (summary), key questions and outcomes, target audience and size, your timeline, budget, and other key variables.

Let’s talk about them in more detail.

Elements of a great market research plan

1) overview or summary.

Use the first section of your market research plan to outline the background to the problem that you are attempting to solve (this is usually your problem statement or problem question). Include background information on the study’s purpose and the business to provide context to those who would read the report, as well as the need for the research. Keep the overview simple and concise; focus on the most salient elements.

2) Objectives

What is it that you hope to achieve with this survey? Your objectives are the most important part of the survey. Make sure to list 3-5 of the decisions or initiatives that the research will influence.

For example:

Understand the most-used channels for customer engagement and purchasing to decide where to prioritize marketing and sales budget in Q1 2022. Determine what’s causing customer churn at the later stages of the buyer journey and implement a new retention and sales strategy to address it.

Your objectives should be smart, that is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

3) Deliverables (or outcomes)

This section should focus on what you expect to have at the end of the project. How many responses are you looking for? How will the data be presented? Who will the data be shared with? (Stakeholders, executives) What are your next steps? Make sure you state how you will collect and analyze the data once it’s available.

Products such as Qualtrics CoreXM make this process fast and incredibly easy to do, drastically reducing the time to insights so you can make more meaningful changes, faster.

4) Target audience

Not to be confused with your market research sample, your target audience represents who you want to research. Of course, your sample may include ideal buyers from your target audience. Here you want to define the main variables or factors of your audience: demographic , age, location , product interaction, experience, and so on. It’s worth building out your buyer personas (if you haven’t already) and including a quick breakdown of them here.

5) Sample plan

How many participants do you want to research and what kind of groups do you want to reach? Depending on these two variables, you may have to use qualitative, quantitative , or multi-method approaches.

6) Research methods

What methods will you use in your market research project? The insights (and the granularity of those insights) will depend on the methods and tools you choose. For example, and as mentioned earlier, surveys are often the go-to for many organizations as they’re affordable and straightforward, but if you want to get more personal views from your respondents, one-to-one interviews might be more applicable. You might even want to take a hands-off approach and simply observe participants as they use your products, or try a combination of research methods. Make sure to outline what methods you will use as part of your research plan.

7) Timeline

How long will your research project run? It’s worth putting together a Gantt chart to highlight key milestones in the project, along with dependencies, and to break down tasks as much as possible. Schedule in contingency time in case some tasks or research runs over – or you need more responses.

Set a budget for the overall program and list it in your plan. Though this might be the most difficult aspect of any research plan, it helps you to be more strategic about tasks and hold people accountable at each stage of the process. If costs go over, that’s good to know for future market research. If costs are lower than anticipated, you then have the opportunity to do further research or prop up other areas of the study.

9) Ethical concerns or conflicts of interest

One of the most important parts of your market research plan, you should highlight any ethical concerns. To begin with, it’s your duty to state whether or not responses will be kept confidential and anonymous as part of the study. It’s also important to allow participants to remain anonymous and ensure you protect their privacy at all times.

Another issue to consider is stereotyping. Any analysis of real populations needs to make approximations and place individuals into groups, but if conducted irresponsibly, stereotyping can lead to undesirable results.

Lastly, conflicts of interest – it may be that researchers have interests in the outcome of the project that lead to a personal advantage that might compromise the integrity of your market research project. You should clearly state in your market research report that any potential conflicts of interest are highlighted and addressed before continuing.

But I want a faster solution!

Well, there’s a quicker and far easier way to do all of the above and get the data you need – just use a market research survey template. In our next section, we’re going to share a whole list of templates that you can use.

Free market research survey templates

No matter what kind of research you want to conduct, we have templates that will remove the complexity of the task and empower you to get more from your data. Below we’ve compiled a list of templates for four key experience areas: Brand , Customer , Employee , and Product .

All of our research templates are free. All you need to do is sign up for a free Qualtrics account to access them.

Brand experience market research templates:

• Logo testing : Collect feedback to help you evaluate and iterate on your logo designs and concepts
• Brand awareness : Track the level of brand awareness in your target market, including current and potential future customers
• Ad testing : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to an advertisement so you know which campaigns to deploy before you invest
• A/B testing : Quickly and easily compare to versions or options in a study, whether it’s a design, headline, color palette or a mock-up of your latest ad campaign

Customer experience market research templates

• Student satisfaction : Gather feedback on how your institution is delivering on the student experience
• Net promoter score (NPS) : Measure customer loyalty and understand how they feel about your product or service using one of the world’s best-recognized metrics
• Customer satisfaction : Evaluate how satisfied your customers are with your company, including the products and services you provide, and how they are treated when they buy from you
• Customer service : Gain insights into the contact center experience, so you can achieve and maintain optimum levels of customer experience (CX) performance
• Event feedback : Measure the effectiveness of your events and how well they meet attendee expectations so that you can continuously improve your offering
• IT help desk : Understand how satisfied your employees and customers are with your IT help desk experience
• Website suggestion box : Collect visitor feedback on how your website can be improved
• Website satisfaction : Find out how satisfied visitors are with your website’s design, usability, and performance
• Store purchase feedback : Capture customer experience data at the point of purchase to help you improve the in-store experience
• Online purchase feedback : Find out how well your online shopping experience performs against customer needs and expectations

Employee experience market research templates

• Employee satisfaction : Get an overview of your current employee experience
• Manager feedback : Improve your skills as a leader with valuable feedback from your team
• Employee engagement : Find out how employees find the current experience at your workplace with this entry-level engagement survey
• Employee exit interview : Understand why your employees are leaving and how they’ll speak about your company once they’re gone with this survey template
• Employee onboarding : Improve your onboarding program by understanding what’s working and what’s not
• Team event planning : Collect inputs from employees to plan a team event that works for everyone
• Meeting feedback : Check-in with team members after a meeting to see how well your company is running and what improvements can be made
• Interview feedback : Improve your candidate experience by gathering actionable insights about the interview process
• Employee suggestion box : Gather anonymous data to help address concerns and improve the employee experience in your organization
• Candidate experience : Improve your candidate experience to increase brand perception, offer acceptance rates, and hiring process efficiency with this single-touchpoint survey template
• Employee suggestion action : Take employee feedback a step further by working with your staff to quantify solutions based on their experience data

Product experience market research templates

• Product research : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to a new product or product feature across every stage of the product development journey
• Pricing : Understand how to set the exact price point for your product or service, according to your target consumers
• Feature prioritization : Compare and contrast product features using conjoint analysis to find the optimal mix for your customers
• Product package testing : Collect feedback on your product packaging to see how well it meets the needs and expectations of your customers

Armed with the right market research templates, getting the information you need across brand, product, customer and employee disciplines — as well as beyond — is significantly easier.

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Related resources

Mixed methods research 17 min read, market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, request demo.

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A Guide To The Top 14 Types Of Reports With Examples Of When To Use Them

What Is The Report Definition?

What are the different types of reports, what does a report look like, what you should look for in a reporting tool, types of reporting for every business & purpose.

Businesses have been producing reports forever. No matter what role or industry you work in, chances are that you have been faced with the task of generating a tedious report to show your progress or performance.

While reporting has been a common practice for many decades, the business world keeps evolving, and with more competitive industries, the need to generate fast and accurate reports becomes critical. This presents a problem for many modern organizations today, as building reports can take from hours to days. In fact, a survey about management reports performed by Deloitte says that 50% of managers are unsatisfied with the speed of delivery and the quality of the reports they receive.

With this issue in mind, several BI tools, such as RIB BI+ , have been developed to assist businesses in generating interactive reports with just a few clicks, enhancing the way companies make critical decisions and service insights from their most valuable data.

But, with so many types of reports used daily, how can you know when to use them effectively? How can you push yourself ahead of the pack with the power of information? Here, we will explore the 14 most common types of reports in business and provide some examples of when to use them to your brand-boosting advantage. In addition, we will see how online dashboards have overthrown the static nature of classic reports and given way to a much faster, more interactive way of working with data.

Let’s get started with a brief report definition.

A report is a document that presents relevant business information in an organized and understandable format. Each report is aimed at a specific audience and business purpose, and it summarizes the development of different activities based on goals and objectives.

That said, there are various types of reports that can be used for different purposes. Whether you want to track the progress of your strategies or stay compliant with financial laws, there is a different report for each task. To help you identify when to use them, we will cover the top 14 most common report formats used for businesses today.

1. Informational Reports

The first in our list of reporting types is informational reports. As their name suggests, this report type aims to give factual insights about a specific topic. This can include performance reports, expense reports, and justification reports, among others. A differentiating characteristic of these reports is their objectivity; they are only meant to inform but not propose solutions or hypotheses. Common informational reports examples are for performance tracking, such as annual, monthly, or weekly reports.

2. Analytical Reports

This report type contains a mix of useful information to facilitate the decision-making process through a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights as well as real-time and historical insights. Unlike informational reports that purely inform users about a topic, this report type also aims to provide recommendations about the next steps and help with problem-solving. With this information in hand, businesses can build strategies based on analytical evidence and not simple intuition. With the use of the right BI reporting tool, businesses can generate various types of analytical reports that include accurate forecasts via predictive analytics technologies. Let’s look at it with an analytical report example.

The example above is the perfect representation of how analytical reports can boost a business’s performance. By getting detailed information such as sales opportunities, a probability rate, as well as an accurate pipeline value forecast based on historical data, sales teams can prepare their strategies in advance, tackle any inefficiencies, and make informed decisions for increased efficiency.

3. Operational Reports

These reports track every pertinent detail of the company’s operational tasks, such as its production processes. They are typically short-term reports as they aim to paint a picture of the present. Businesses use this type of report to spot any issues and define their solutions or to identify improvement opportunities to optimize their operational efficiency. Operational reports are commonly used in manufacturing, logistics, and retail as they help keep track of inventory, production, and costs, among others.

4. Industry Reports

Next in our list of the most common kinds of reports, we have industry-specific reports. As its name suggests, these types of reports are used in specific industries and provide valuable information about KPIs and goals that are unique to that industry. For instance, construction reports are invaluable tools to track project progress and extract valuable conclusions to optimize processes.

The example below is a report for a construction company that has multiple active projects. The template offers a complete overview of performance with KPIs related to contract value, budget, and profit margins, among other things. That said, the most valuable part of this report is the detailed overview of finishing projects and projects in execution, where we see that industry-specific KPIs like the SPI and CPI are tracked for each project with color to understand the status at a glance. Templates like this one play a fundamental role in efficient project management in construction as they offer the necessary overview to make smart decisions with fresh data. 

5. Product Reports

As its name suggests, this report type is used to monitor several aspects related to product development. Businesses often use them to track which of their products or subscriptions are selling the most within a given time period, calculate inventories, or see what kind of product the client values the most. Another common use case of these reports is to research the implementation of new products or develop existing ones. Let’s see it in more detail with a visual example.

The image above is a product report that shows valuable insights regarding usage intention, purchase intention, willingness to pay, and more. In this case, the report is based on the answers from a survey that aimed to understand how the target customer would receive a new product. Getting this level of insight through this report type is very useful for businesses as it allows them to make smart investments in new products and set realistic pricing based on their clients’ willingness to pay.

6. Department Reports

These reports are specific to each department or business function. They serve as a communication tool between managers and team members who must stay connected and work together for common goals. Whether it is the sales department, customer service, logistics, or finances, this specific report type helps track and optimize strategies on a deeper level. Let’s look at it with an example of a team performance report.

The image above is a department report created with an online data analysis tool, and it tracks the performance of a support team. This insightful report displays relevant metrics such as the top-performing agents, net promoter score, and first contact resolution rate, among others. Having this information in hand not only helps each team member to keep track of their individual progress but also allows managers to understand who needs more training and who is performing at their best.

7. Progress Reports

From the branch of informational reports, progress reports provide critical information about a project’s status. Employees or managers can produce these reports daily, weekly, or monthly to track performance and fine-tune tasks for the project’s better development. Progress reports are often used as visual materials to support meetings and discussions. A good example is a KPI scorecard.

8. Internal Reports

A type of report that encompasses many others on this list, internal reports refer to any type of report that is used internally in a business. They convey information between team members and departments to keep communication flowing regarding goals and business objectives.

As mentioned above, internal reports are useful communication tools to keep every relevant person in the organization informed and engaged. This healthcare report aims to do just that. By providing insights into the performance of different departments and areas of a hospital, such as in and outpatients, average waiting times, treatment costs, and more, healthcare managers can allocate resources and plan the schedule accurately, as well as monitor any changes or issues in real-time.

9. External Reports

Although most of the report types listed here are used for internal purposes, not all reporting is meant to be used behind closed doors. External reports are created to share information with external stakeholders such as clients or investors for budget or progress accountability, as well as for governmental bodies to stay compliant with the law requirements.

The image above is the perfect example of an external client report from an IT project. This insightful report provides a visual overview of every relevant aspect of the project’s development. From deadlines, budget usage, completion stage, and task breakdown, clients can be fully informed and involved in the project.

10. Vertical & Lateral Reports

Next, in our rundown of types of reports, we have vertical and lateral reports. This reporting type refers to the direction in which a report travels. A vertical report is meant to go upward or downward the hierarchy, for example, a management report. A lateral report assists in organization and communication between groups that are at the same level of the hierarchy, such as the financial and marketing departments.

11. Research Reports

Without a doubt, one of the most vital reporting types for any modern business is centered on research. Being able to collect, collate, and drill down into insights based on key pockets of your customer base or industry will give you the tools to drive innovation while meeting your audience’s needs head-on.

The image above is a market research analytics report example for customer demographics. It serves up a balanced blend of metrics that will empower you to boost engagement as well as retention rates. Here, you can drill down into your audience’s behaviors, interests, gender, educational levels, and tech adoption life cycles with a simple glance.

What’s particularly striking about this dashboard is the fact that you can explore key trends in brand innovation with ease, gaining a working insight into how your audience perceives your business. This invaluable type of report will help you get under the skin of your consumers, driving growth and loyalty in the process.

12. Strategic Reports

Strategy is a vital component of every business, big or small. Strategic analytics tools are perhaps the broadest and most universal of all the different types of business reports imaginable.

These particular tools exist to help you consistently understand, meet, and exceed your most pressing organizational goals by providing top-level metrics on various initiatives or functions.

By working with strategic-style tools, you will:

• Improve internal motivation and engagement
• Refine your plans and strategies for the best possible return on investment (ROI)
• Enhance internal communication and optimize the way your various departments run
• Create more room for innovation and creative thinking

13. Project Reports

Projects are key to keeping a business moving in the right direction while keeping innovation and evolution at the forefront of every plan, communication, or campaign. But without the right management tools, a potentially groundbreaking project can become a resource-sapping disaster.

A project management report serves as a summary of a particular project’s status and its various components. It’s a visual tool that you can share with partners, colleagues, clients, and stakeholders to showcase your project’s progress at multiple stages. Let’s look at our example and dig a little deeper.

Our example above is a construction project management dashboard that offers a 360-degree view of a project’s development. This invaluable construction collaboration tool can help keep every relevant project stakeholder involved and informed about the latest developments to ensure maximum efficiency and transparency.

Work and budget development and cost breakdown charts can help develop efficient construction cost control strategies to ensure the project remains profitable and on schedule. On the other hand, progress metrics like the SPI and the CPI can help assess construction productivity issues that can lead to delays and costly overruns.

14. Statutory Reports

It may not seem exciting or glamorous, but keeping your business’s statutory affairs in order is vital to your ongoing commercial health and success.

When it comes to submitting vital financial and non-financial information to official bodies, one small error can result in serious repercussions. As such, working with statutory report formats is a watertight way of keeping track of your affairs and records while significantly reducing the risk of human error.

Armed with interactive insights and dynamic visuals, you will keep your records clean and compliant while gaining the ability to nip any potential errors or issues in the bud.

Now that we’ve covered the most relevant types of reports, we will answer the question: what does a report look like?

As mentioned at the beginning of this insightful guide, static reporting is a thing of the past. With the rise of modern technologies like self-service BI tools, the use of interactive reports in the shape of business dashboards has become more and more popular among companies.

Unlike static reports that take time to be generated and are difficult to understand, modern reporting tools are intuitive. Their visual nature makes them easy to understand for any type of user, and they provide businesses with a central view of their most important performance indicators for an improved decision-making process. Here, we will cover 20 useful dashboard examples from different industries, functions, and platforms to put the value of dashboard reporting into perspective.

1. Financial Report

Keeping finances in check is critical for success. This financial report offers an overview of the most important financial metrics that a business needs to monitor its economic activities and answer vital questions to ensure healthy finances.

With insights about liquidity, invoicing, budgeting, and general financial stability, managers can extract long and short-term conclusions to reduce inefficiencies, make accurate forecasts about future performance, and keep the overall financial efficiency of the business flowing. For instance, getting a detailed calculation of the business’s working capital can allow you to understand how liquid your company is. If it’s higher than expected, it means you have the potential to invest and grow—definitely one of the most valuable types of finance reports.

2. Construction Report

Our next example is a construction report offering the perfect overview for efficient construction bid management . In this case, the template is tracked for an enterprise that has multiple projects working simultaneously and needs a general view of how everything is performing to ensure maximum efficiency.

The key metric highlighted in this report is the net bid value, which shows the value of all submitted bids, including canceled ones. As seen in the net bid value by status chart, only a small amount is accounted for canceled bids, which means this organization’s construction bidding process is efficient. The rest of the charts displayed in the template help provide a deeper understanding of bids to make informed decisions.

Another valuable aspect of this construction report is its interactivity. The filters on top allow the user to visualize only data for a specific category, project classification, or bid status, making it possible to answer any questions that arise during meetings or discussions. This was not possible in the past as the construction industry relied heavily on static reporting. Luckily, with the rise of digital construction tools, like interactive real-time reporting, they no longer need to rely solely on intuition or outdated information. Instead, they have fresh insights at all times.

3. Marketing Report

Our following example is a marketing report that ensures a healthy return on investment from your marketing efforts. This type of report offers a detailed overview of campaign performance over the last 12 weeks. Having access to this information enables you to maximize the value of your promotional actions, keeping your audience engaged by providing a targeted experience.

For instance, you can implement different campaign formats as a test and then compare which one is most successful for your business. This is possible thanks to the monitoring of important marketing metrics such as the click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), and more.

The visual nature of this report makes it easy to understand important insights at a glance. For instance, the four gauge charts at the top show the total spending from all campaigns and how much of the total budget of each campaign has been used. In just seconds, you can see if you are on target to meet your marketing budgets for every single campaign.

4. Sales Report

An intuitive sales dashboard like the one above is the perfect analytical tool to monitor and optimize sales performance. Armed with powerful high-level metrics, this report type is especially interesting for managers, executives, and sales VPs as it provides relevant data to ensure strategic and operational success.

The value of this sales report lies in the fact that it offers a complete and comprehensive overview of relevant insights needed to make smart sales decisions. For instance, at the top of an analysis tool, you get important metrics such as the number of sales, revenue, profit, and costs, all compared to a set target and to the previous time period. The use of historical data is fundamental when building successful sales strategies as they provide a picture of what could happen in the future. Being able to filter the key metrics all in one screen is a key benefit of modern reporting.

5. HR Report

Our next report example concerns human resources analytics. The HR department needs to track various KPIs for employee performance and effectiveness. However, it must also ensure that employees are happy and working in a healthy environment since an unhappy workforce can significantly damage an organization. This intuitive dashboard makes this possible.

Providing a comprehensive mix of metrics, this employee-centric report drills down into every major element needed to ensure successful workforce management. For example, the top portion of the dashboard covers absenteeism in 3 different ways: yearly average, absenteeism rate with a target of 3.8%, and absenteeism over the last five years. Tracking absenteeism rates in detail is helpful as it can tell you if your employees are skipping workdays. If the rate is over the expected target, then you have to dig deeper into the reasons and find sustainable solutions.

On the other hand, the second part of the dashboard covers the overall labor effectiveness (OLE). This can be tracked based on specific criteria that HR predefined, and it helps them understand if workers are achieving their targets or if they need extra training or help.

6. Management Report

Managers must monitor big amounts of data to ensure that the business is running smoothly. One of them being investor relationships. This management dashboard focuses on high-level metrics that shareholders need to look at before investing, such as the return on assets, return on equity, debt-equity ratio, and share price, among others.

By getting an overview of these important metrics, investors can easily extract the needed insights to make an informed decision regarding an investment in your business. For instance, the return on assets measures how efficiently are the company’s assets being used to generate profit. With this knowledge, investors can understand how effectively your company deploys available resources compared to others in the market. Another great indicator is the share price; the higher the increase in your share price, the more money your shareholders are making from their investment.

7. IT Report

Just like all the other departments and sections covered in this list, the IT department is one that can especially benefit from these types of reports. With so many technical issues to solve, the need for a visual tool to help IT specialists stay on track with their workload becomes critical.

As seen in the image above, this IT dashboard offers detailed information about different system indicators. For starters, we get a visual overview of the status of each server, followed by a detailed graph displaying the uptime & downtime of each week. This is complemented by the most common downtown issues and some ticket management information. Getting this level of insight helps your IT staff to know what is happening and when it is happening and find proper solutions to prevent these issues from repeating themselves. Keeping constant track of these metrics will ensure robust system performance.

8. Procurement Report

The following report example was built with intuitive procurement analytics software. It gives a general view of various metrics that any procurement department needs to manage suppliers efficiently.

With the possibility to filter, drill down, and interact with KPIs, this intuitive procurement dashboard offers key information to ensure a healthy supplier relationship. With metrics such as compliance rate, the number of suppliers, or the purchase order cycle time, the procurement team can classify the different suppliers, define the relationship each of them has with the company and optimize processes to ensure it stays profitable.

One of the industries that could truly benefit from this template is construction. Managing procurement in construction projects is not easy, as suppliers must be picked carefully to ensure they meet the project’s needs. An overview like this one can help assess the abilities of each supplier to choose the ones that best meet the requirements. In construction, supplier selection is more than just about pricing, it also involves availability, certifications, quality, etc.

9. Customer Service Report

Following our list of examples of reports is one from the support area. Armed with powerful customer service KPIs, this dashboard is a useful tool for monitoring performance, spotting trends, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and improving the overall effectiveness of the customer support department.

Covering aspects such as revenue and costs from customer support as well as customer satisfaction, this complete analysis tool is the perfect tool for managers who have to keep an eye on every little detail from a performance and operational perspective. For example, by monitoring your customer service costs and comparing them to the revenue, you can understand if you are investing the right amount into your support processes. This can be directly related to your agent’s average time to solve issues; the longer it takes to solve a support ticket, the more money it will cost and the less revenue it will bring. If your agents take too long to solve an issue, you can think of some training instances to help them reduce this number.

10. Market Research Report

This list of report types would not be complete without a market research report. Market research agencies deal with a large amount of information coming from surveys and other research sources. Considering that, reports that can be filtered for deeper interaction become more necessary for this industry than for any other.

The image above is a brand analytics dashboard that displays the survey results about how the public perceives a brand. This savvy tool contains different charts that make it easy to understand the information visually. For instance, the map chart with the different colors lets you quickly understand in which regions each age range is located. The charts can be filtered further to see the detailed answers from each group for a deeper analysis.

11. Social Media Report

Last but not least, we have a social media report. This scorecard-format dashboard monitors the performance of four main social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. It serves as a perfect visual overview to track the performance of different social media efforts and achievements.

Tracking relevant metrics such as followers, impressions, clicks, engagement rates, and conversions, this report type serves as a perfect progress report for managers or clients who need to see the status of their social channels. Each metric is shown in its actual value and compared to a set target. The colors green and red from the fourth column let you quickly understand if a metric is over or under its expected target.

12. Logistics Report

Logistics are the cornerstone of an operationally fluent and progressive business. If you deal with large quantities of goods and tangible items, in particular, maintaining a solid logistical strategy is vital to ensuring you maintain your brand reputation while keeping things flowing in the right direction.

A prime example designed to improve logistical management, our warehouse KPI dashboard is equipped with metrics required to maintain strategic movement while eliminating any unnecessary costs or redundant processes. Here, you can dig into your shipping success rates across regions while accessing warehouse costs and perfect order rates in real-time. If you spot any potential inefficiencies, you can track them here and take the correct course of action to refine your strategy. This is an essential tool for any business with a busy or scaling warehouse.

13. Manufacturing Report

Next, in our essential types of business reports examples, we’re looking at tools made to improve your business’s various manufacturing processes.

Our clean and concise production tool is a sight to behold and serves up key manufacturing KPIs that improve the decision-making process regarding costs, volume, and machinery.

Here, you can hone in on historical patterns and trends while connecting with priceless real-time insights that will not only enable you to make the right calls concerning your manufacturing process at the moment but will also allow you to formulate predictive strategies that will ultimately save money, boost productivity, and result in top-quality products across the board.

14. Retail Report

As a retailer with so many channels to consider and so many important choices to make, working with the right metrics and visuals is absolutely essential. Fortunately, we live in an age where there are different types of reporting designed for this very reason.

Our sales and order example, generated with retail analytics software, is a dream come true for retailers as it offers the visual insights needed to understand your product range in greater detail while keeping a firm grip on your order volumes, perfect order rates, and reasons for returns.

Gaining access to these invaluable insights in one visually presentable space will allow you to track increases or decreases in orders over a set timeframe (and understand whether you’re doing the right things to drive engagement) while plowing your promotional resources into the products that are likely to offer the best returns.

Plus, by gaining an accurate overview of why people are returning your products, you can omit problem items or processes from your retail strategy, improving your brand reputation as well as revenue in the process.

15. Digital Media Report

The content and communications you publish are critical to your ongoing success, regardless of your sector, niche, or specialty. Without putting out communications that speak directly to the right segments of your audience at the right times in their journey, your brand will swiftly fade into the background.

To ensure your brand remains inspiring, engaging, and thought-leading across channels, working with media types of a business report is essential. You must ensure your communications cut through the noise and scream ‘quality’ from start to finish—no ifs, no buts, no exceptions.

Our content quality control tool is designed with a logical hierarchy that will tell you if your content sparks readership, if the language you’re using is inclusive and conversational, and how much engagement-specific communications earn. You can also check your most engaging articles with a quick glance to understand what your users value most. Armed with this information, you can keep creating content that your audience loves and ultimately drives true value to the business.

16. Energy Report

In the age of sustainability and in the face of international fuel hikes, managing the energy your business uses effectively is paramount. Here, there is little room for excess or error, and as such, working with the right metrics is the only way to ensure successful energy regulation.

If your company has a big HQ or multiple sites that require power, our energy management analytics tool will help you take the stress out of managing your resources. One of the most striking features of this dashboard is the fact that it empowers you to compare your company’s energy usage against those from other sectors and set an accurate benchmark.

Here, you can also get a digestible breakdown of your various production costs regarding energy consumption and the main sources you use to keep your organization running. Regularly consulting these metrics will not only allow you to save colossal chunks of your budget, but it will also give you the intelligence to become more sustainable as an organization. This, in turn, is good for the planet and your brand reputation—a real win-win-win.

17. FMCG Report

The fast-moving consuming goods (FMCG) industry can highly benefit from a powerful report containing real-time insights. This is because the products handled in this sector, which are often food and beverages, don’t last very long. Therefore, having a live overview of all the latest developments can aid decision-makers in optimizing the supply chain to ensure everything runs smoothly and no major issues happen.

Our report format example above aims to do just that by providing an overview of critical performance indicators, such as the percentage of products sold within freshness date, the out-of-stock rate, on-time in full deliveries, inventory turnover, and more. What makes this template so valuable is the fact that it provides a range of periods to get a more recent view of events but also a longer yearly view to extract deeper insights.

The FMCG dashboard also offers an overview of the main KPIs to aid users in understanding if they are on the right track to meet their goals. There, we can observe that the OTIF is far from its target of 90%. Therefore, it should be looked at in more detail to optimize it and prevent it from affecting the entire supply chain.

18. Google Analytics Report

Regardless of your industry, if you have a website, you probably require a Google Analytics report. This powerful tool helps you understand how your audience interacts with your website while helping you reach more people through the Google search engine. The issue is that the reports the tool provides are more or less basic and don’t give you the dynamic and agile view you need to stay on top of your data and competitors.

For that reason, we generated a range of Google Analytics dashboards that take your experience one step further by allowing you to explore your most important KPIs in real-time. That way, you’ll be able to spot any potential issues or opportunities to improve as soon as they occur, allowing you to act on them on the spot.

Among some of the most valuable metrics you can find in this sample are the sessions and their daily, weekly, and monthly development, the average session duration, the bounce rate by channel and by top 5 countries, among others.

19. LinkedIn Report

Another very important platform that companies use, no matter their size or industry, is LinkedIn. This platform is the place where companies develop and showcase their corporate image, network with other companies, and tell their clients and audience about the different initiatives they are developing to grow and be better. Some organizations also use LinkedIn to showcase their charity or sustainability initiatives.

The truth is LinkedIn has become an increasingly relevant platform, and just like we discussed with YouTube, organizations need to analyze data to ensure their strategies are on the right path to success.

The template above offers a 360-degree view of a company page’s performance. With metrics such as the followers gained, engagement rate, impressions vs unique impressions, CTR, and more. Decision-makers can dive deeper into the performance of their content and understand what their audience enjoys the most. For instance, by looking at the CTR of the last 5 company updates, you can start to get a sense of what topics and content format your audience on the platforms interact with the most. That way, you’ll avoid wasting time and resources producing content without interaction.

20. Healthcare Report

Moving on from platform-related examples, we have one last monthly report template from a very relevant sector, the healthcare industry. For decades now, hospitals and healthcare professionals have benefited from data to develop new treatments and analyze unknown diseases. But data can also help to ensure daily patient care is of top quality.

Our sample above is a healthcare dashboard report that tracks patient satisfaction stats for a clinic named Saint Martins Clinic. The template provides insights into various aspects of patient care that can affect their satisfaction levels to help spot any weak areas.

Just by looking at the report in a bit more detail, we can already see that the average waiting time for arrival at a bed and time to see a doctor are on the higher side. This is something that needs to be looked into immediately, as waiting times are the most important success factors for patients. Additionally, we can see those lab test turnarounds are also above target. This is another aspect that should be optimized to prevent satisfaction levels from going down.

As you learned from our extensive list of examples, different reports are widely used across industries and sectors. Now, you might wonder, how do I get my hands on one of these reports? The answer is a professional online reporting tool. With the right software in hand, you can generate stunning reports to extract the maximum potential out of your data and boost business growth in the process.

But, with so many options in the market, how do make sure you choose the best tool for your needs? Below we cover some of the most relevant features and capabilities you should look for to make the most out of the process.

1. Pre-made reporting templates

To ensure successful operations, a business will most likely need to use many reports for its internal and external strategies. Manually generating these reports can become a time-consuming task that burdens the business. That is why professional reporting software should offer pre-made reporting templates. At RIB, we offer an extensive template library for the construction industry that allows users to generate reports in a matter of seconds—allowing them to use their time on actually analyzing the information and extracting powerful insights from it.

2. Multiple visualization options

If you look for report templates on Google, you might run into multiple posts about written ones. This is not a surprise, as written reports have been the norm for decades. That being said, a modern approach to reporting has developed in the past years where visuals have taken over text. The value of visuals lies in the fact that they make the information easier to understand, especially for users who have no technical knowledge. But most importantly, they make the information easier to explore by telling a compelling story. For that reason, the tool you choose to invest in should provide you with multiple visualization options to have the flexibility to tell your data story in the most successful way possible.

3. Customization

While pre-made templates are fundamental to generating agile reports, being able to customize them to meet your needs is also of utmost importance. At RIB Software, we offer our users the possibility to customize their construction reports to fit their most important KPIs, as well as their logo, business colors, and font. This is an especially valuable feature for external reports that must be shown to clients or other relevant stakeholders, giving your reports a more professional look. Customization can also help from an internal perspective to provide employees who are uncomfortable with data with a familiar environment to work in.

4. Real-time insights

In the fast-paced world we live in today, having static reports is not enough. Businesses need to have real-time access to the latest developments in their data to spot any issues or opportunities as soon as they occur and act on them to ensure their resources are spent smartly and their strategies are running as expected. Doing so will allow for agile and efficient decision-making, giving the company a huge competitive advantage.

5. Sharing capabilities

Communication and collaboration are the basis of a successful reporting process. Today, team members and departments need to be connected to ensure everyone is on the right path to achieve general company goals. That is why the tool you invest in should offer flexible sharing capabilities to ensure every user can access the reports. For instance, we offer our users the possibility to share reports through automated emails or password-protected URLs with viewing or editing rights depending on what data the specific user can see and manipulate. A great way to keep everyone connected and boost collaboration.

As we’ve seen throughout our journey, businesses use different report formats for diverse purposes in their everyday activities. Whether you’re talking about types of reports in research, types of reports in management, or anything in between, these dynamic tools will get you where you need to be (and beyond).

In this post, we covered the top 14 most common ones and explored key examples of how different report types are changing the way businesses are leveraging their most critical insights for internal efficiency and, ultimately, external success.

With modern tools and solutions, reporting doesn’t have to be a tedious task. Anyone in your organization can rely on data for their decision-making process without needing technical skills. Rather, you want to keep your team connected or show progress to investors or clients. There is a report type for the job. To keep your mind fresh, here are the top 14 types of data reports covered in this post:

• Informational reports
• Analytical reports
• Operational reports
• Product reports
• Industry reports
• Department reports
• Progress reports
• Internal reports
• External reports
• Vertical and lateral reports
• Strategic reports
• Research reports
• Project reports
• Statutory reports

At RIB Software , we provide multiple solutions to make construction companies’ lives easier. Our construction data analytics software, RIB BI+, offers powerful business intelligence and reporting capabilities to help businesses in the building sector manage their data and make data-driven decisions to boost the quality of their projects. If you are ready to benefit from automated, interactive analytics, get a demo of RIB BI+ today!

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Wakefield’s Market Intelligence team conducts research across a wide variety of consumer and B2B industries, ranging from maternity wear to electric vehicle charging technology. Research can include everything from market sizing to cost modeling and competitor analysis. See examples of our Market Intelligence work by clicking on the abridged case studies below. For help with your market intelligence , quantitative and qualitative research needs, contact Wakefield Research today.

Consumer – Apparel

Maternity Wear Market – investigating the market size, industry forecasts, and competitive landscape.

B2B – Automotive

Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure – analyzing the key players and trends shaping the industry.

B2B – HR & Payroll

HR Services & Payroll Outsourcing Market – analyzing the competitive landscape and evaluating the industry’s major players.

B2B – Telecom

Fixed Wireless Broadband Competitive Landscape – profiling of fixed wireless broadband providers in the U.S. Midwest.

Consumer – Services

Dating Services Market – profiling of U.S. online dating services offerings and key players.

Consumer/B2B – Transport

Electric Scooter Rental Market – an investigation into the competitive landscape, regulation and market dynamics in U.S. cities.

Consumer – Automotive

Best Cities for Car Ownership – ranking the best cities to own a car among America’s 20 most populous metropolitan areas.

B2B – Construction

U.S. Cement and Ready-Mix Concrete Markets – analyzing the current market landscapes and key players to determine the feasibility of market entry.

Consumer – Technology

Smart Home Market – providing insights into the size and projected growth of the global smart home market.

Consumer – Healthcare

U.S. CPAP Market – exploring the Continuous Airway Pressure (CPAP) device market, including device features, manufacturers, and market size.

B2B – Military & Civil

Aerospace Head-Up Display (HUD) Market – an investigation into market size and growth forecasts and an overview of the competitive landscape, market trends and new technology.

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